


your halo slipping down

by woodswit



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Bit of Mystery, Dark!Jon, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, I REGRET NOTHING, Modern AU, Ramsay Bolton is His Own Warning, Suspense, did I make Jon a sexy ex-con mechanic?, hints of kink because why not just take dark!jon to its logical destination, smut in the last chapter with some kink..., there's also a bit of fluff because i am still apparently in rom-com mode, this was supposed to be intelligent but has turned into an ode to jon's forearms, uptown girl downtown boy dynamic, yes i did
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:00:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 36,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25941010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woodswit/pseuds/woodswit
Summary: When Arya disappears while hunting Sansa's stalker, Sansa knows she's got to take matters into her own hands. Her first move is to go north----to Jon Snow, who has just been released from prison. Jon Snow, the boy in black, is her last hope.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 703
Kudos: 894
Collections: Fave_Fanfics_Rereads, adventures of the mini cooper, my completed fics





	1. nightshade

**Author's Note:**

> Jon is darker in this than I usually write; think post-resurrection Jon.

"Just be careful. Use your head." Dad's voice is weary. "I can't have two daughters missing." 

Sansa locks her Mini and drops the key in the pocket of her duffle coat as she looks up at Dreadfort Inn: old mossy stone, diamond-paneled glass, trailing vines, gothic arches, slate roof. It's the oldest hotel in Winter Town, and used to be a sprawling estate, but the family that owned it couldn't maintain it, and it was sold. Now it's rented out for weddings, engagement shoots, the rare corporate event, and has reasonably-priced rooms that are steeped in history.

"I'm the careful one, remember?" Sansa points out, shifting her bag on her shoulder. Her breath clouds in the air and icy rain dots her cheeks. Past the crumbling walls and vines, mist rolls lazily over tumbling hills and through black pines. "I'm just going to do a bit of asking around." 

"I told your mother you were on a retreat," Dad warns. "And that you'd be back in a week." 

Gravel crunches under her ankle boots as Sansa approaches the entrance to the inn. If she were Arya, she'd have a sassy retort about her independence, but Sansa is the good one, the well-behaved one, and besides, she is trying to limit the amount of grief she gives her parents right now. They've had enough to last them a lifetime, and if Arya doesn't—

—No. She can't think like that. She has to be as determined as Arya, as willful as Arya, as optimistic as Arya. 

"I hope she believed you," Sansa settles on, "Because I never go on retreats. Look, I'm about to check in. I'll text you." 

"Not that," Ned grumbles. "Why can't you just ring me? You know I hate all that messing with the little keyboard—" 

"—Alright, I'll ring you." 

In spite of everything, Sansa smiles as she rings off and tucks her mobile in the pocket with her keys. She knows her father would kill to be here with her—he cannot stand doing nothing—but they agreed he would be there to work with the police, to monitor them, to be present for any updates. 

This task Sansa will do alone. 

The Dreadfort's reception area is as gloomy as its exterior, but at least it's warm. A dying fire flashes and sputters in the enormous, dark-wood hearth, and a faint scent of mildew makes Sansa's nose prickle as she approaches the desk. A man slouches by the desk, peering at something on a laptop balanced precariously on his thighs, and when Sansa politely clears her throat, he startles as though shocked and smacks the laptop closed. 

"Sorry," she begins, but her words catch in her throat as the man looks up, and she is struck with a bolt of recognition.

His blue eyes are pale and wondrous, walking that fine line between elfin and eerie, and there is something strikingly familiar about the set of his jaw and the mussed dark curl of his hair. He is unexpectedly handsome, but in a blurred way, like she is glimpsing fine features through mottled glass. "Hi. I'm checking in," she continues slowly. 

A wry, delighted smile. He sets aside the laptop and leans on the desk, cocking his head slowly. 

"Sansa Stark," he greets, shaking his head. "I can't believe it." 

It takes her a moment, but then— 

"Ramsay Bolton," she realises, and he grins and winks. 

"Got it in one. Sharp as ever. It's been what, ten years?" He's still gazing at her even as he grabs at a binder on the desk and snaps it open, and Sansa feels her face grow hot. 

"Ten years," she agrees. She is fumbling for her basic manners—a rare occurrence for her; but she's in shock—when Ramsay looks up again, quick as a whip, still smiling. 

"Found you. The one day I don't check the reservations," he marvels, shaking his head. "Dunno what I'd've done if I'd seen your name, though," he continues, and he's already turning around, rifling along a wall of old-fashioned, heavy skeleton keys. "Let's see, let's see... room two twenty one, that's it," he's muttering to himself. 

Should she comment on how different he looks? Does he want her to comment, or would that be insulting? Sansa tries to imagine how she might feel, but it's different for men, isn't it? 

"You look great," she settles on neutrally, as Ramsay Bolton turns back to her and hands her one of the skeleton keys. He grins and winks again. 

"Polite as you ever were," he observes wryly, and he swings round the large desk. He's an inch or so taller than her even in her heeled ankle boots, and he cuts a fine figure in tailored dark jeans and a trim navy jumper as he reaches for her bag. "Let me get that," he says, and before she can decline, he's already taken her bag from her, and she is hit with a burst of fine cologne. "This way," he says, nodding before leading her through a carved archway. 

They walk along a hall with diamond-paneled glass windows that look out onto the front drive, the Tudor-paneled walls lined with old oil paintings. "I lost a bit of weight, as you can see, and no one ever knows quite how to handle it. No surprise that _you_ did with grace," he says over his shoulder. His strides are almost too fast for Sansa to keep up with, even though she's got fairly long legs and was once a runner. "So what brings you into town?" 

They reach a large stairwell, carpeted with ancient, threadbare carpet, and Sansa follows Ramsay up the stairs, considering what she will say. 

"A retreat," she eventually says, as they alight the second storey. The halls are narrower here, and cosier, too. It's easier to keep up with Ramsay now, as they walk along the hall together. The walls are Tudor-paneled here, too, but they glow with warmth from the dated sconces. The carpet has been replaced with a neutral that is less era-appropriate but less odorous, too. It's almost pleasant. 

"Ah. A writer?" Ramsay guesses, and they reach a carved door. He tosses up the key and catches it again, shooting her a grin. "You were always something of a poet in school, if I'm not mistaken?" 

"Yes, actually," Sansa admits in surprise. "I don't know how you remembered." 

Ramsay unlocks the door and elbows it open, revealing a cosy room with a large hearth, a wingback chair, and a four poster bed. 

"Hard to forget a girl like Sansa Stark," he says lightly. It is almost flirtatious, but it's so casual that it might simply be gallantry. He sets her bag on the luggage stand, and swings back to her, clapping his hands together. "So! Before I leave you to it—can I be of any service in any way? Offer dinner recommendations? Sightseeing tips? Coffee shops?" 

He's so energetic, his voice so musical and bright, and Sansa cannot decide whether it's invigorating or exhausting. Maybe it's because of all the stress she has been under in the last few months, which has made her world feel as grey and misty as the rolling hills of the Dreadfort. She smiles at Ramsay, trying to appreciate his energy. 

"Actually, yes." She reaches into her pocket for her mobile, and opens the Notes app. She doesn't need his help, but he looks so hopeful, and she feels guilty for how well he remembers her and how little she remembers him. "Have you heard of Rayder's? It's a pub." 

Ramsay's smile drops. 

"Rayder's?" He looks her over, those icy blue eyes lingering on her fine coat, her expensive mobile, her thick auburn hair. "If you're looking for a pub, there are safer—"

"—I need to go to Rayder's," she interrupts with a smile. "It's, um, for research." 

"Ah. For a book?" Ramsay cocks his head, crosses his arms. There's something about the set of his shoulders that is appealing, that makes her suddenly aware of how her breath must smell like the sandwich she clumsily ate behind the wheel on the way here, of how her skin must be greasy from the long drive. It's jarring. She would never have expected that Ramsay Bolton might make her feel like that.

"Yes, for a book. I'm just going to pop in," she promises. 

"You really shouldn't go alone," he warns her. "Seriously, Sansa. If you really are set on going, I'd be happy to volunteer—"

"Oh, I'm meeting someone." 

Somehow this is spiraling out of control already; her exhaustion is catching up with her. Ramsay is peering at her. 

"If you're meeting someone there," he says with a puzzled smile, "wouldn't they tell you how to get there?" 

How can she end this conversation swiftly, yet politely? She usually has more finesse than this, and she puts it down to being tired and overwhelmed by Ramsay's bright, pulsing energy. 

"Oh, good point. I should just ask him," she blusters. "I'm so silly. Didn't even think of that!" 

"The creative mind can't be bothered with such trifles as logic," Ramsay reassures her, and she cannot decide if it's insulting or flattering. "Well, since you're going anyway, I'll tell you how to get there. It's at the far west end of High Street—the very far end, the bitter end. Don't leave anything good visible in your car—seriously, not even a mobile charger cable—and make sure your companion meets you at your car and walks you back to it." 

"Thank you, I appreciate it," she says, and ignores the clench of fear. 

(Why is she doing this again? This is something Arya would do; this is not what Sansa would do.) 

"I'll wait up for you," Ramsay says, and again she cannot decide if he's flirting or not. He lingers in the open doorway, and taps his knuckles on the frame thoughtfully. "Funny coincidence, but—do you remember Jon Snow?" 

Thank god she happens to be facing her bag, focused on unzipping it, a curtain of hair hiding her face, her hands buried in the bag so he can't see how they briefly jolt. "Tall, dark, brooding; town rebel; I think your sister was friends with him, right?" 

"Um, vaguely," she lies, and looks up when she has mastered herself, and meets Ramsay's eyes. "What about him?" 

Ramsay's eyes so briefly narrow—like he's reading her—but then it's gone and she wonders if she imagined it. 

"Oh, nothing," he says, shaking himself out of something. "It's just, he was just released from prison and he hangs around Rayder's a lot. Tough crowd there. You might run into him." 

"Well! I'm not sure I ever even spoke to him; I doubt he'd remember me," she dismisses as breezily as she can. But Ramsay's grinning again, shaking his head. 

"Trust me, no man forgets Sansa Stark," he reminds her, gaze lingering on her hair. "That hair alone... I've never seen quite that colour on anyone else." 

"It's highlighted," Sansa says, and she offers a smile that she hopes is polite but dismissive. It has been so long since anyone has even hinted at her being pretty, but then, she doesn't meet too many men these days. She hates how it makes her feel giddy and flushed. 

(She has always had the potential to be just a little vain, maybe.)

Ramsay laughs to himself, and taps the doorframe thoughtfully again, looking down. 

"Well, just be careful. And—you know what, let me give you my mobile number. Just in case you run into trouble. Nothing untoward," he promises with a roguish grin. "Just in case your companion stands you up and you need help." 

"That's really not—" 

"You don't have to give me yours, if you feel uncomfortable," Ramsay says firmly. "Just let me give you mine, alright?" 

His eyes are so wide and sincere, and Sansa is keenly aware of the daylight fading. She doesn't want to arrive at Rayder's too late; she really needs to get going. So she smiles, and takes his mobile number, putting it into her contact list obediently. 

"That's really kind," she says. "Thank you, really." 

"Of course. Well, I'll let you to it," Ramsay says at last. "Be safe out there. Rayder's is no place for a poet." 

When at last he's gone, Sansa slumps on the edge of the bed. 

She's used to doing research. She's actually, if she says so herself, pretty good at it. But her research is typically concerning settings for her pulpy, fun YA novels, not for tracking down criminals who might be familiar with her sister's whereabouts. It wasn't even that hard to track down Jon Snow, and perhaps it is the ease of it that disturbs her. This should be harder. She's a writer, so she knows that there has to be a hard part, and she doesn't want the hard part to happen when she can't get away. 

Jon was always kind to Arya, wasn't he? There's no reason to be scared—except that all those years ago just a look from him made her belly clench and her knees shake with something she has decided to label as apprehension. That was a decade ago, when motorbikes and cigarettes seemed like the height of dangerous glamor; since then Sansa has learned that glamor fades but danger persists. The angry boy has grown into an angry man, and the mistakes and choices he has made have set the dye. His fate is sealed—he has become a Bad Man, and she is now voluntarily chasing after said Bad Man. 

Her hands shake. Sansa doesn't do stuff like this. Sansa knits infinity scarves and posts on social media about pumpkin spice lattes and, when she's feeling really dangerous, she reads smutty novels. Arya's the one who chases bad men, who walks into biker bars, who—

—She can't think like this now. Because really, it's her fault Arya's missing. She's the one who made the mistake of telling her sister—her iron-willed sister who has a weakness for defending those she loves and who has a personal interest in sleuthing—that she thought she might have a stalker. She should never have said anything, and then Arya wouldn't have gone looking, and then—

_Stop._

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. It's getting late, so it's time to go to Rayder's. 

* * *

Winter Town is in a state of flux: after decades of grimy depression, it is slowly becoming gentrified. Signs of its impending transformation pop up like mushrooms: the craft breweries in the old factories; art seeping between bricks like vines. In the distance, grey snow-capped mountains loom, dark as granite and disappearing into cloud. Blue smoke floats across the High Street, and Sansa drives past an art gallery that has visitors lined up on the sidewalk. But as she drives along High Street, further west, those little signs of money die off, and the true main street of Winter Town is revealed: grim warehouses with peeling signs, chainlink fences, and then, at last, the street drops steeply and, at the middle of the hill, Sansa's Mini skids down the hill as she brakes hard in front of Rayder's. 

It's a tall, narrow building of stone and dark, rain-soaked wood, crammed between two abandoned ones; motorbikes are sprawled out front, and the fogged windows glow with dim golden light. It almost looks cosy compared to the rain out here, but Sansa is no fool. Her dad raised her to have some measure of awareness, and when Sansa parks the Mini, she does as Ramsay suggested and hides even her mobile charging cable (not that she needed his advice). 

Her ankles feel weak and she tries not to think about the fear. She has to do this, for Arya. There is no alternative; she could find no other means of contacting Jon Snow, and Sansa is certain that he is more likely to have an idea of where her sister has gone than anyone else that Sansa can dream up. She is desperate; Jon Snow, the boy in black, is her last hope. 

So she takes a deep breath, and pushes open the peeling, green-painted door to Rayder's. 

She is at once assaulted with thick smoke and the blare and crunch of music that was not written for someone like her to enjoy. There's a sea of heads and leather-clad shoulders, and it smells like piss, beer, smoke, and—maybe—sex. 

She is more aware than ever of her bright copper hair which gleams with health and privilege; of her duffle coat which seemed benign to her but now screams finery and disposable income; of her unmade, unlined face. A few heads turn as she shuts the door behind her, and she keeps her face carefully blank as she scans the room, but she isn't quite sure of what she's looking for—surely Jon Snow must look different—and she is all too aware of how much she does not want to meet anyone's eyes. 

She's only seen one woman so far, a woman with wild fiery red hair, more carroty than hers, and a haggard, freckled face and thickly lined eyes. She's working behind the bar, clad in a black, low-cut tee; her bare arms are compact and lean with reedy muscle. 

"H-hi, excuse me," she calls when she walks to the corner of the bar counter, with as much confidence as she can muster. It takes a few tries before the woman at last glances at her with a dismissive, disdainful look. "I'm looking for Jon Snow," she calls over the music. 

The bartender pauses in front of a tap, and looks at Sansa slowly. 

"Jon Snow," she repeats slowly. "Hm. Dunno him." 

She clearly _does_ know him; she is making it clear that she does and that she doesn't have any interest in helping Sansa. But Sansa has come too far, and is too desperate, to back down now. She reaches into her pocket and slides the crisp bill across the counter. 

"I need to find him." 

The bartender glances down at the money, and then, with a quick, furtive move, she swipes it. 

"Next floor up," she says, jerking her chin toward the crowded stairs. "At the table all the way in the back. Can't miss him. He's the pretty one," she adds with a sly, almost knowing look, and Sansa keeps her face carefully blank. "Almost as pretty as you." 

"Thanks," Sansa says. She's about to turn and force her way up the stairs when the bartender rolls her eyes. 

"Hang on," she says with exasperation. She reaches beneath the bar, and grabs a slightly grimy glass and a bottle of cheap whisky. "You look like a fucking fairy princess. At least carry this." She pours a long gulp's worth of whisky, and slides it across the counter to Sansa. "That's better." 

"Now a drunk fairy princess," a man sitting by them at the bar puts in, and the bartender lets out a cackle of a laugh as Sansa flushes. 

Gripping her whisky, Sansa steels herself. She just needs to talk to Jon Snow. She'll pull him aside, remind him of who she is, and simply ask him a few questions. That's it. She can do this. She was prepared to come back here every night for a week until she found him, so she should be grateful he's here tonight. 

She must do this.

(For Arya.) 

She has to push through groups of men; she is jostled and beer is spilt on her duffle coat, and she is almost certain she was groped on her way. When she alights the top of the stairs, she finds this room is darker, and quieter, but also more dangerous, too. Heads turn but she ignores them best she can, scanning the room for her quarry. But it's too smoky; she is forced to walk in further, weaving around tables and standing groups, and that's when she sees him. 

At the table in the back, she sees a lean back, clad in black, and tangled dark hair. And everyone else at the table is looking at her, and she is rooted to the spot as that head of wild hair turns, slowly. He's holding a hand of cards, a cigarette in the same hand, and when he turns to look back, her first impression is of flinty eyes and pretty lips that are cold and sweet like snow; soft grey lashes and stubble. Almost as pretty as she is, but as dark and stony as the mountains that loom over Winter Town, and just as unknowable and dangerous to her, too. 

She is too far from him to hear him, but on his lips, she clearly reads: _Sansa Stark._


	2. sober

She's trying not to think about what Ramsay Bolton said, that _men don't forget a girl like Sansa Stark_. How could Jon Snow remember her? She remembers him, but only out of that sense of apprehension that used to lock her knees and make her stomach drop, back in school. 

"Jon... Snow," she adds belatedly, because just 'Jon' feels too familiar. She bites her lip and bravely marches to the table, Jon's gaze following her almost lazily the whole way, and stands before him, holding her whisky with the same discomfort that men hold their wives' and girlfriends' purses when forced. The smoke is thicker, here, and it makes her eyes sting. 

There it is again, that same swooping sense of fear, as she meets his cool grey gaze, and the fear creeps up her neck, making her skin prickle with gooseflesh. His eyes flick over her hair, her cheek, her fine coat, before coming back to rest at her eyes. He is surrounded by bitter, careworn men who leer at her, and she defiantly ignores their stares. _Be like Arya,_ she tells herself. "I-I need to speak to you—alone."

Raucous laughter explodes around her—they're yelling lewd things, like _you can get me alone Red_ and other, darker things—that die at once with a chilling, sharp glance from Jon at the table. Sansa can feel her milkmaid's complexion flushing, and she wishes her feelings did not show quite so easily on her skin. "It's about my sister, Arya Stark." 

Now she's got his attention.

Jon sets down his hand of cards, but he is taking too long to decide whether to take her seriously, and her grip on the glass is growing slippery with nerves. "Please." 

"Haven't seen your sister in years," he dismisses at last, and exhales a slim stream of smoke. "Go home," he adds, shifting to face the table again, and Sansa suppresses a burst of fury. From the policemen to her friends, no one has taken Arya's disappearance seriously enough. The only person who has come close is her mother's friend, Uncle Petyr, well-connected and well-to-do, and though he has made vague mentions of hiring a private investigator, he still does not have the urgency she and her family crave from the people around them. 

"She's missing," Sansa blurts. "Please, just give me five minutes." 

She waits for another burst of lewd comments, but all of the men seem to be waiting for Jon's signal, watching him carefully, as Jon takes out his cigarette and casts her a look. She can tell he is about to dismiss her again, so she angles her head to hold his gaze, and something in him shifts. She can see it in his eyes but she's not sure what it means. 

He exhales more smoke, and pushes back from the table. 

"Come on," he orders. It's too crowded and she's not sure which way to turn, which way to walk, and his chest bumps her shoulder as she turns. "That way." He grips her shoulder and steers her toward a narrow door in the corner, and her skin throbs, though his grip is not quite painful, as she walks as directed. 

In the corner, Jon reaches around her to open the door, and she is hit with a burst of the scent of fire—cold mountain air, blue smoke, shimmering flame among rock—before she is pushed onto a fire escape. 

The night is damp. This balcony overlooks the back alleyway, and across the way, a cracked wall covered with weeds rises up. Beyond it is scrappy, uneven land and woods. The fire escape clangs wetly beneath her ankle boots, and she draws her duffle coat around her more tightly as she turns to face Jon again. 

"How did you find me here?" he asks immediately, after shutting the door. 

There's just enough light to see his face, to see how it has changed since school. There's a long white scar over one eye, and a shorter one over the other brow, and he's got stubble now; however, his mouth and eyelashes are just as pretty as they always were. His hair is as wild as it always was, but she can see the dark edge of a tattoo creeping out of the collar of his shirt. She is not sure if he had any tattoos in school. 

"I asked around," she replies, intentionally vaguely. "Look, Arya is missing, and—"

"—If you knew where to find me then you'll know why I can't help you," Jon cuts in immediately. 

"Yes, you were in jail," Sansa admits, wondering if that's the right terminology to use and, as ever, trying not to wonder why he was in jail. His chest is taut and lean beneath his shirt, like he is strong, like he is fast—so what has he done? Her lip wants to quiver and she refuses to let it. "I'm not interested in that. Arya went missing recently, and all I know is that she went north. The last time her car was seen, it was on the way here, to Winter Town, and you're the only person here I can think of that she'd get in touch with." 

Jon crosses his arms and leans against the railing, studying her. He doesn't say anything, so she nervously rushes to fill the silence. "She was going after my stalker—trying to find information—and I don't know what she found, but—I'm just—" 

The idiocy of this plan, the girlish desperation of it, crystallises here now before her, as Jon looks at her, waiting for her to offer words that don't sound stupid. "I _know_ it's a long shot, and I know it's ridiculous, but I'm desperate. The police have done nothing, they've found _nothing_ , and it's my fault. I have to do something." 

"A stalker?" Jon finally asks. 

"Oh, that." Sansa almost forgets that until Arya disappeared, she was terrified for her life. "I was—I was getting strange things in the mail, being followed, finding my things in my flat being rearranged. That sort of thing. When I tried to go to the police, they didn't take it seriously." 

Jon's lips twitch like she's said something funny, but he only takes a long drag on his cigarette. She fights the urge to slap it out of his hands, because she hates smoking and finds it foul; but she has the feeling that would go poorly for her. "I guess I thought perhaps she had mentioned to you she'd be coming into town, or she might have stopped by." 

"That was a shot in the dark. You came all this way, came _here_ , tonight—just on the off-chance I'd be here and might have heard from her?" 

"Like I said, I know it's ridiculous." Sansa feels curiously angry and she wonders where it is coming from. But the night is cold and damp, and Jon is looking at her like she's a fool, and she feels like a fool, a ridiculous, absurd, foolish little girl—though she is twenty-eight and by most definitions not just a girl anymore—and it's just infuriating. Her eyes sting like she wants to cry, the way it goes when she's really angry. "So you haven't heard from her? Haven't heard anything?" 

"I would have said yes the first time you asked, if I had."

Jon shifts away from the railing, a finality in his tone. "But I haven't seen her in years, not since long before the arrest."

Sansa cannot help but wonder in what capacity Arya saw Jon, the last time they saw each other. Arya always insisted it was not remotely romantic, but she can't help but wonder... "You should leave," Jon says now, and he's already turning to open the door again. 

His even tone, his lack of interest in a person he once called a friend—it makes her all the angrier. 

"I _am_ leaving, believe me," she says, her voice tightly controlled, and she pushes past him and back into the bar. 

It's an explosion of noise and smoke again: the music is warbly and blaring like she's under water, and the smell of fresh and old smoke makes her lungs burn. She knows her face is flushed as she pushes impulsively past throngs of men, but she can barely see straight. She knows she is overreacting, but there is a crushing, swooping, horrific sense of hopelessness that threatens to knock her to her knees and she will not show that misery here. She realises that she left the glass of whisky out on the fire escape as she reaches the stairs, but she cannot bear to go back for it, and she hopes the bartender understands. 

Even the stairs are crowded now, with clutches of men, and they all seem to swarm her as Sansa tries to push past them and descend; smoke is blown in her face and there's a hand on her arm, and laughter fills her ears, echoing and shadowed. 

"Hey, sweetheart—"

"—Come here, bitch—"

There is a clamor and they're closing in on her, and Sansa begins to feel short of breath—

—And then, quite suddenly, the noise dies down. And it's just the blaring music and the men staring, no longer at her, but at something behind her, and she hears slow footfalls on the steps so she looks back up the stairs, over her shoulder. 

Jon is coming down the steps with that chilling gaze she saw earlier, and the men slip back like a silent tide from her—and then a firm hand is on the small of her back, and she can only think the word, _territorial_ , as he leads her out of the bar. She thinks of a snarling wolf, of shadowed, lesser wolves slinking back, but the image skitters away as soon as it's come. 

The cold night hits like a slap, but Jon does not stop at the door. He guides her down the steps, shifting to grip her upper arm just short of too tight, as he leads her toward the Mini.

"How did you know that was my car?" she wonders, as Jon guides her to face him, and he rolls his eyes.

"Unlock it," he orders, but he's already peering into the car, and then he briefly lets go to look in the back before returning to her, his grip just as harsh. "Look, I don't know where your sister is, but you're not gonna find her here. I don't know where she disappeared off to, but if you don't stop showing up places like this looking like _that_ , you're bound to follow wherever she went, and it's nowhere good, believe me."

"Looking like what?"

(Her vanity is prickling again; she thinks of Ramsay's words earlier.)

"Like a stupid little rich girl who doesn't know any better. Like bait," he says under his breath, and then he releases her, but he doesn't step back. He is invading her personal space, looking down at her, and she doesn't know whether it's part of that territorial act or if it's simply aggression.

"I can't give up," she says. "And what do you mean, 'nowhere good'?" 

"I mean when women disappear you don't find them in the places you hoped you might, if you do find them," Jon says bluntly. His gaze flicks down, then up again. It is a look of disdain, like he is scanning her and finding some fundamental failing in her. "Have some fucking sense. Go home, hope the police do their job, and stay out of dive bars." 

Sansa breathes in through her nose. She realises now that there is a clutch of men lingering by the motorbikes, regarding her and Jon with interest, and she wonders what would have happened if she had walked out alone. She's got pepper spray but it's in a cute little pink can inside her car; it would be of zero use to her now. Her own foolishness and lack of awareness is staggering. "Go home." Jon's voice is low; when her gaze strays too far, he grips her arm again, hard, startling her into looking at him again. "You don't belong here." 

"Let go of me," she says icily, and after a moment and a long, cool look, he drops her arm and steps back, onto the curb. 

They say nothing more. It's starting to rain, anyway, icy drops that will turn to black ice on the road, so Sansa gets into her car, refusing to look in Jon Snow's direction, and starts the Mini. She pulls away from Rayder's, with that slim dark figure in her rearview mirror growing ever smaller as she drives up the hill. 

She drives along High Street in a stupor; it takes three traffic lights for her to realise her knees are quivering on the seat, and at a red light she leans against the wheel and draws in gasping, greedy breaths. The rain is coming down harder now, and her hands are shaking uncontrollably as it all hits at once: the surging feeling of failure, the choking claustrophobia of being harassed by so many men at once; that scent of fire and the throbbing grip of Jon's hand on her arm. 

And there's something else, too. A certain crawling itch, deep in her belly. She wonders if it is a strange, hysterical reaction to her fear. She has heard that adrenaline can make a person feel odd things. She forces the thought down and turns onto the narrow, dark road back to the Dreadfort Inn. The road is bumpy, pitted with potholes, and it's so dark that she can't avoid the deepest pothole: the one that makes her Mini jolt and sputter, that makes her tyre pressure gauge flicker in a panic of stale orange light as her tyre blows out, that forces her to hurtle to the side of the road and sit, in horror, in the pouring, icy rain. 

Fuck. 

She just wants to be in her hotel room, in her four-poster, with hot tea and a book to occupy her racing mind. There isn't a tow service available, and she's not sure she can change to the spare tyre in this rain and darkness. 

There's no choice but to call Ramsay Bolton, and she's too overwhelmed to feel too bad about it. 

"Hello?" His voice is chipper and musical as though it's eight in the morning, and it takes Sansa a moment to swallow her emotions. 

"Um. Hi. This is Sansa Stark," she begins sheepishly. "I've got a flat. It turns out I do need your help after all." 

* * *

"They've really got to do something about these roads." 

Ramsay's car is warm and dry, and lightly spicy with his cologne. The fact that Ramsay Bolton has become a man who wears good cologne is a puzzle to her frazzled mind. Sansa buckles her seatbelt. In the rain, Ramsay's ice blue eyes are luminous. He shoots her a grin. "You alright? It's just a flat tyre. There's a shop in town; I can take you there tomorrow, if you like." 

"That's so kind," Sansa says, as they pull away from her Mini. It is too late and too icy to organise the tow; she will have to hope her precious car will be safe here overnight. She sits limply in the passenger seat as Ramsay navigates the bad road back to the Dreadfort. 

"So did you meet your friend?" It takes her a moment to remember what he is talking about. 

"Oh! Yes," she says with a tired laugh. "Yes, and you were right about Rayder's. Quite the atmosphere." 

"You're quite the brave girl, to go in in the first place," Ramsay says admiringly, but he's still focused on the road. "I would never go in there." 

"If I had really had an idea of what it was like, I wouldn't have gone," she promises him. "I'm not gutsy like that." 

"You're gentle," Ramsay replies. Is it gallantry or flirting? Sansa does not know. "Funny thing," Ramsay begins, as they pull into the Dreadfort's circular drive, "but Jon Snow comes up twice in one night and I've not thought of him in many years." 

"Oh?" Sansa keeps her expression neutral as he parks in his own spot. 

"Yeah, I think he works in the shop we'll take your car to," Ramsay says with a laugh. "I think so, anyway; at least, that's what I heard." 

They dash from the car to the door, boots slapping on the wet gravel. The reception area is empty, and humid from the fire and the rain outside, but it is oddly comforting after the pall of Rayder's. A fuzzy record is playing, giving the whole room a pre-war atmosphere that her writer's mind finds appealing, and she relaxes. Ramsay is shedding his coat. "You look spent. Can I offer you wine? Hot chocolate?" he's teasing as he hangs his coat on a hook behind the desk. 

And she can still feel his cologne in the back of her throat, and there is still that strange itch in the very pit of her belly, so far down it's not really her belly anymore but it's too dangerous to think otherwise; and she so wants something cosy and the idea of curling up before the fire with some wine and a surprisingly handsome man, distracting herself from her great failure and her hopelessness, is tempting, but— 

—She meets Ramsay's blue eyes, and something gives her pause.

Arya would not give in to despair like this, so she won't either. She smiles at him apologetically. 

"Thank you, maybe another time," she says as kindly, as gratefully as she can, and almost cringes when she can see Ramsay's face fall slightly. "I'm a little shaken up between Rayder's and the flat, and I think what I need is a hot bath." 

"Of course," Ramsay still says, inclining his head. "Please. Let me know when you'd like to go to the shop tomorrow." 

"Thank you. Really. You're my knight in shining armor," she says, mostly because she feels ashamed that she is accepting his help without offering anything—even simply a shared glass of wine before the fire—in return. 

"Well, you are a maiden in distress," Ramsay says cheekily, and though he's not wrong, something about it rankles. "Sleep well, Sansa Stark."

 _Like a stupid little rich girl,_ Jon's harsh voice echoes in her ear, like he's standing behind her and breathing those cruel words against her skin. _Like bait._

Sansa nearly runs back to her room. 


	3. me and the devil

"Alright, the car's been towed to Mormont Mechanics," Ramsay is saying as they leave the Dreadfort. It's a brisk morning, last night's rain lingering at the edges, and the autumn leaves look almost tremulous in the watery sunlight. As they roll down the road with all the potholes, Sansa marvels at the difference: the road looks sleepy and pastoral, charmingly off the beaten path—it has none of the sinister menace of how it looked last night in the rain. "Should just be an easy patch-up, and then you'll have your car back!" 

"Thank you, seriously. You've been so helpful." 

Sansa can't quite inject the right amount of feeling into her words. Last night she lay in the four-poster bed and tried not to despair over the profound dead-end she had hit, and it took a long time to fall asleep. Now she is exhausted and dejected, and must come to terms with her own naivete: first, in her sincere belief that somehow Jon Snow would magically know where Arya was (so stupid) and second, in going to Rayder's last night. The innocence of it now astounds her. 

(She also must contend with all that she felt at seeing Jon Snow. This morning when dressing she examined her arms, hoping for some mark from his hands, some proof that it was all real, and not just one of her ridiculous imaginings. It would be so like her, to dream up some silly story where she goes and confronts a handsome ex-con, all dreamt up to amuse herself, to inhabit the mind of a sharper Sansa, a steelier Sansa. But there's no such proof that it was real, and in her mind's eye, Jon Snow's face is blurred by smoke.) 

"That's a lovely necklace, by the way," Ramsay says, after a few moments of quiet, as his car trundles along toward the high street. Sansa reflexively touches her neck, where the tiny brass charm sits at her throat: a little bird. The sharp points of the charm dig into her skin. 

"Thank you; it was a gift." 

"Ah, Sansa Stark must get many gifts," Ramsay teases. Sansa flushes and tries not to think of the "gifts" from her stalker: the latest, after Arya's disappearance, was a black silk dress, cut immaculately and seemingly made to measure. A mourning dress; a dress for sex. She did not try it on, she only passed it along to the police, but as the officers lifted the cool silk from the box, she knew what they were all thinking, because it was her first thought as well: she would never be able to wear undergarments with such a dress. 

"Not really," she dismisses, wondering if Ramsay notices her flush. 

"You don't have dozens of suitors, swarming around you like flies? I don't believe that," Ramsay parries at once. 

He is as energetic and hyperactive as he was yesterday: he has a buzzing, staticky sort of presence this morning, like he is a hologram fading in and out of view. She noticed a slight tremor in his hands earlier and wonders if he has a caffeine addiction. "I remember in school you always had a trail of boys, following you around like ducklings." 

"I don't remember that at all," Sansa says. She is becoming uncomfortable, but it's also the truth: she only remembers longing for Joffrey and despairing, stupidly, at his profound lack of interest in her. 

"Too busy writing poetry to notice the world around you," Ramsay muses, shaking his head. 

When they pull onto the high street and turn to go north, Sansa is relieved to see the sign for Mormont Mechanic, and she feels guilty for it. Ramsay is being kind to her, and besides, he cannot help his lack of social graces. He was a loner in school, picked on and bullied—not just for his weight, but for his strangeness. His singsong voice, his goblin-like mannerisms. The guilt sours, because though Sansa never picked on him, she never stood up for him, either. She stood up for others, so why did she always let Ramsay suffer? She doesn't know, but she is ashamed for it now. 

Ramsay parks in front of Mormont Mechanic. It's a shabby brick garage, but it's also tidy, and there is a busy energy to it. Even though it is on a depressed, grim street it has a practical, cheerful presence that makes her feel safe. But Ramsay is suddenly acting odd: won't meet her eyes, won't stop fidgeting, and lets out a strange laugh. "Well, here we are!" 

Sansa is a little nervous herself, because Jon Snow works here, but she has put the thought aside. She tried to take his advice, and today she has dressed in simpler, darker colors (though her brightly-coloured duffle coat is the only coat she has with her) and she has put her hair back in a ponytail, hoping to make it less noticeable. It hardly matters, because (little does Ramsay know) she is going to be leaving today, once she has her car back, but it was probably good advice and probably well-meant, and she is realising she needs all the help she can get in not acting like a naive little girl. 

"You don't have to come in," Sansa points out, as they shut the car doors, but Ramsay lets out that odd little laugh again. "I'm sure I'll just pay for my car and then be on my way."

"Oh, no, I couldn't ever just leave you here on your own," he promises, shaking his head. "This isn't the sort of place one leaves Sansa Stark." 

She is grateful they are walking inside and he can't see her face. Sansa walks in first, then Ramsay—

—And the shop abruptly goes silent. 

It is just as tidy yet shabby inside: there is a line of three cars (her Mini is at the far end) and there's an old-fashioned television in the corner above a metal desk, playing the news. A large, broad man with fiery red hair and a matching unruly beard sits at the desk in a black jumpsuit, paperwork abandoned to stare at them. A skinny mechanic with large ears looks out from under the car he's working on, and drops the wrench he's holding. 

And Jon Snow is walking toward them, his grey eyes frosty. He's in the same black mechanic's jumpsuit, the sleeves rolled up and his dark hair pulled back, a white tee beneath the jumpsuit that looks oddly boyish. He slows to a stop. 

"Bolton." It is like he doesn't even see Sansa. Ramsay is grinning, a nervous, manic grin that Sansa almost wants to slap off his face. Somehow she feels it is making things worse, though she cannot pinpoint how. 

"Jon Snow!" Ramsay chirps, lifting up his arms as though they are long-lost friends. Jon folds his arms across his lean chest. "What a reunion. We're all here! You remember Sansa Stark, of course. That's her Mini that we have come to rescue." 

His high, cold, musical voice rings too loud in the shop. No one has gone back to work yet; they are all staring at them, and Sansa thinks again of a pack of wolves, slowly circling them. Her heart is in her throat and her palms are growing clammy. The red-bearded man's feral gaze is fixed on Ramsay like he's a target; and even the skinny mechanic under the car, whose large ears make him seem friendly and benign, looks dangerous as he regards Ramsay with careful focus. 

Jon's gaze shifts, reluctantly, from Ramsay, and he turns to Sansa and jerks his chin towards her Mini. 

"I need to talk to you about your car," he says. "You can hang here," he adds to Ramsay over his shoulder. Ramsay laughs and holds up his hands. 

"Of course, of course. Cars are so personal," he's saying, but then Jon is walking away, and Sansa hastens to follow him to the very end of the cars. 

Across the garage, they're out of earshot of Ramsay. Jon snaps up a clipboard from the floor in front of her Mini and rifles through the pages. 

"Bad news. Your rim's bent. We need to order a new wheel," he says shortly, and Sansa's mouth goes dry. 

"Sorry?" 

Jon looks at her. 

"Your wheel. It's bent." 

"I—I got _that_ ," she stammers, feeling oddly embarrassed and angry. "I mean, how could that even happen, and—" she grapples for some common sense, because she is still reeling, "—and how long should it take?" 

"Probably happened when you hit the pothole, because you'd never be able to drive very long on a rim that bent. That road's bad news," Jon says, looking over her shoulder at Ramsay briefly before looking back at her. "It'll be a few days at least. We don't carry Mini wheels," he adds dryly, "and I didn't see any in the junkyard when I went by earlier." 

"Right. Well, thanks for looking," she says a little lamely. Now she's going to be stuck here even longer, with nothing to do but hang around the hotel and wonder about Arya. "I suppose I'll be in town for a few days more," she adds, just for something to say.

Jon watches her, tapping the clipboard against one hand like he's thinking hard on something, and then suddenly lets out a low curse. He sets the clipboard on the hood of the Mini, and tears off a corner of paper, drawing a pen from his back pocket.

"Look, Arya was like a sister to me," he begins in a low voice, so that only she can hear. He's scribbling numbers on the ripped page furiously, like she has personally offended him. "I'm guessing you're staying at Bolton's inn—you have a real knack for picking stupid places to be—so here."

He folds the paper and shoves it at her so fast she only barely has time to catch it. 

"Excuse me?" 

Jon looks exasperated and impatient, and somewhat embarrassed, too. 

"That's my mobile; I don't usually have it on me, so I put the shop number there, too. If I'm not here, you can ask for Pyp or Tormund, they're good men."

"What for?" Sansa looks down at the paper and unfolds it. The handwriting is sharp but surprisingly elegant. When she looks up, Jon's eyes are following Ramsay with the cold focus of a predator. 

"Be careful around Bolton," is all he says. Then he's shoving the clipboard and pen at Sansa. "Write down your contact information. Someone from the shop'll call you when the wheel's in." 

"Be careful around Bolton?" she whispers, ignoring the clipboard. "What does that even mean? He's nice, and gentle, and he's been really helpful." She looks back; Ramsay is still standing awkwardly in the corner, looking nervous and helpless and somehow very young, under the relentless eyes of the other two mechanics. 

"Just be careful," Jon says. "Use your head. Your sister always said you were the smartest person she knew." 

But before she can ask further, he's walking away from her briskly, and Sansa hastens to follow him. Her ankle boots on the concrete floor make an embarrassingly prissy sound, and she thinks, _like_ _bait_ , again. 

"Well? All good?" Ramsay prompts. 

"Looks like I'll be here a few days," Sansa explains as Jon walks to the metal desk where that large red-haired man sits. Now the red-haired man is looking at her with interest, and she flushes and turns away. 

"There's your girl, Snow," comes a deep voice. Sansa looks back, and the red-haired man is directing Jon's gaze to the little television. The news is playing, showing a picture of— 

—Sansa's heart skips. Her childhood friend Jeyne Poole, whom she has not spoken to in many years, is on the screen. It's a low-quality photo, likely taken from Facebook, of Jeyne smiling shyly at the camera. 

"...Sources say that Poole, twenty-eight, was last seen by the old Sept," the reporter's rapid, flat voice carries across the shop. Jon is staring at the screen. "She is the third woman to go missing from Winter Town in the last month. Police are investigating..." 

"You gonna go?" the red-haired man says over the reporter's voice, as a hotline number covers Jeyne's face. He seems to sense Sansa staring, because he looks back at her and Ramsay. "Snow's on the hunt," he explains with a roguish grin. 

"The hunt?" Ramsay asks innocently, but Sansa clenches her fists, understanding it at once. 

So Jon Snow is, for whatever reason, looking for missing women—but he won't even help her look for Arya? He won't even take her seriously? 

"He's got a personal interest," the man explains. Jon finally tears his gaze from the television, and casts a look at Sansa. "These girls keep going missing... Be careful," the red-haired man is saying to her, now, and she's surprised by the seriousness in his voice. "Something bad's on the loose around these parts," he continues, shaking his head. 

"That's enough chatting," Jon says acidly. "Back to work." He's already on his way back to one of the cars, ignoring Sansa, and she feels a soft touch at her back that startles her. 

"Come on, we'd best get out of their way," Ramsay is saying. 

Numb with rage, Sansa leaves Mormont Mechanic and follows Ramsay to his car, but then feigns a look of irritation. 

"Oh, god. Sorry," she says to Ramsay as he opens the driver's side. "I just realised I forgot to ask something. I'm so silly. Let me run back inside—I'll be right out." 

Before Ramsay can protest or question, she is hastening back inside. The door bangs open, and the other two mechanics—Tormund and Pyp, though she doesn't know which is which—look up in surprise as she marches across the shop to Jon, who is working beneath another car. 

She crouches down and stares at him, breathing through her nose. _Be like Arya._ She doesn't even have to try that hard, because her outrage is fuel enough.

"Looking for missing girls, and you won't help me look for Arya," she hisses. Jon focuses on whatever he is working on, his hands never stopping. She notices now there is a smudge of grease on his forehead. 

"You didn't ask for _help_ in looking for her," he points out. "You just asked if I had seen her or heard from her. And I haven't." 

"When are you going to the old Sept?" 

That makes him pause. Jon's eyes slide to her. 

"You're not coming," he says flatly, then returns to the task at hand. 

"Yes, I am." _Be like Arya_ , she reminds herself. "You said Arya was like a sister to you. You _owe_ it to her." 

"What makes you think I'm not looking for her?" 

"Why didn't you say—" 

"—Do you really think it's wise for you to wander around this town with someone like me?" Jon finally snarls at her. "Do you have _any_ sense at all—"

"—No, I don't, so stop mentioning it. And," she continues, wondering if she is pushing too far—a thing she has never had cause to wonder before, but perhaps Arya really is inhabiting her, "you can either leave me to spend all day every day with Ramsay Bolton until my wheel comes in, or you can let me come with you." 

Jon ignores her but she can see the irritation twisting his pretty mouth. "I _am_ smart," Sansa insists, though she doesn't really believe it, but she is so touched that Arya would have said something like that, that it fills her with confidence. "I could be helpful." 

Jon drops his head and closes his eyes as though praying for peace. When he opens them, he looks resignedly up at the undercarriage of the car. 

"I'll meet you at the end of the lane at three," he says at last. Sansa lets out a shaking breath; she did not expect him to cave so quickly. "Wear shoes you can run in. I'll be on my bike. If you're so smart, I don't need to tell you to not tell Bolton where you're going." 

"You don't," she promises quickly. She wants to probe further on _why_ he hates poor Ramsay Bolton so much, but now's not the moment; Arya is more important. "I'll tell him I'm meeting a friend." 

Jon goes back to work. 

"Make it clear it's a man," is all he says, and he doesn't explain further and he doesn't look at her again. 

* * *

"That was uncomfortable," Ramsay is saying as they drive back to the Dreadfort. He laughs shakily. 

"Well, thanks for doing that," Sansa says gently, but Jon's warnings ring in her ear. "You seemed... scared."

"Snow was never... well, let's just say he did not think much of me in school," Ramsay admits. He sounds shamed by it.

"What do you mean?" 

Ramsay glances at her. 

"I never found out why he hated me," he admits, "but let's just say there were more than a few black eyes on my end. One time, he chased me up a tree, like a mad wolf!" he adds brightly, as though recounting a quirky, amusing incident. Sansa swallows. 

"Why would he do that?" 

"Maybe he wanted to help me lose a bit of weight," Ramsay jokes. 

It doesn't add up, but she thinks of lonely, loner Ramsay Bolton. The other kids used to call him Reek and she doesn't know why; she assumes he had body odor but she never got close enough to find out. Her instincts are at war within her: Ramsay is tortured and lonely and trying his best to fit in as an adult, but Jon is an ex-convict with some very real scars who has explicitly warned her about Ramsay, and seems downright incapable of tolerating her being alone with Ramsay. Ramsay has only been helpful and charming—if a bit off-putting—but, on the other hand, Arya loved and trusted Jon very much. 

"I'm sorry," she settles on at last. "That must have been terrifying. I had no idea. I never would have asked you to take me to the shop, had I known."

"Bleeding heart, Sansa Stark," Ramsay almost-rhymes, laughing. "You didn't ask; I offered. Women make fools of men, you know." 

Back at the Dreadfort, Sansa notices a large, glossy black dog in the drive, and Ramsay brightens when he sees it. "Father must have let him out," he muses as they park. The black dog sits on its haunches, unnaturally still, watching. When Sansa gets out of the car it snarls at her, spittle running down its jowls. "Stay," Ramsay says firmly, and though the growling grows louder as they pass, the dog does not move. "Don't worry about him; he's mine." 

"He's ...well-behaved," Sansa observes. Ramsay grins at her over his shoulder. 

"All my dogs are," he says. 

* * *

The crisp brightness of the morning has faded, and at three o'clock, the sky is gloomy and the wind is harsh as Sansa hastens along to the end of the lane. A figure in black is there, on a sleek black motorbike. It's awkward as Sansa walks toward him: she doesn't know whether to smile or wave, but to do nothing, simply walk towards him, is uncomfortable, as it's just too long of a walk. She tries lightly jogging, but she is uncomfortable being watched while she runs, so she slows down again. 

When she finally reaches Jon she is slightly out of breath, and embarrassed. But Jon is looking past her, down the road toward the Dreadfort. 

"You told him you were going out?" Jon asks, gaze lingering at the bend in the road. 

"Yes, for coffee with another writer," she pants, smoothing her hair self-consciously. "And that I needed the walk for thinking time." 

Jon doesn't look happy, but he doesn't say anything else, merely holds out a black, banged-up helmet for her. Sansa realises she will have to sit behind him on the bike; she will have to hold on. She cannot believe this did not occur to her earlier. "I've never ridden a motorbike," she remarks, just to take up space, as she tries to put the helmet on. 

"Can't believe it," Jon says sarcastically, his voice muffled as he puts on his own helmet again. "Get on and hold on." 

"Right. Yes." Sansa awkwardly swings her leg over the bike, her knee knocking into Jon's back. "Sorry, sorry." She clears her throat as she settles in behind him. "Um, where should I hold on?" 

"My waist," Jon says, but he's already getting ready to start the bike, and she only has a split-second to grab fistfuls of his jacket as the bike starts and she is jerked backwards. She grapples with his jacket and ends up leaning forward against his back, heart pounding from the shock, as he weaves between potholes. Everything smells like fire and cold autumn wind, and she can feel his warmth through the fabric of his shirt, and she is highly-aware of every jolt of the bike that jostles her front against his back. She wonders if he is as aware of the friction as she is. 

Whatever. She can't worry about all of that; she has to focus on finding Arya.

She suppresses a surge of hope. Maybe she hasn't hit a dead end after all. 


	4. you know i'm no good

Past the high street, Winter Town becomes scattered. The buildings are older and grander, but in worse states of decay, too. Then, the road snakes through forested hills that are peopled with oaks and sycamores whose trunks look like jagged bones in the autumn light. 

Sansa remembers the old Sept from her school days. It used to be where clandestine parties took place, but as Winter Town has slid in and out of depression, it has become something darker. She can't pretend she isn't scared, because she is. This is the sort of thing Arya would do—in fact, Sansa is almost certain that Arya actually went to a few of those parties. Sansa herself never did.

Her protagonists always do the things that Sansa never would: they open the door, they sneak out to the party, they make the character-defining mistake. Sansa herself never did, and she has wondered, often, if that is why she writes Young Adult. 

Jon slows down before a narrow road. Through the trees, Sansa can see the thin, crumbling spire of the Sept—and even from here, she can hear raucous laughter and shouting. Oh, god. Why is she doing this again?

"Last chance to wait here," Jon says as he takes off his helmet. Sansa struggles to get hers off, and tries not to think about the horror-show that her hair must be. 

"I'm coming with you," she says, even though a part of her almost wants to say, _you know what, maybe I will just hang here_. They get off the motorbike and Jon stows the helmets before turning to her. 

"Then you follow my lead," he says quietly. "I don't know if you ever came here as a kid, but it's not the same as when we were teens." 

Sansa's mouth goes dry. She wants to go hide in her room; she wants to find Arya and Jeyne more. She knows she cannot live with herself if she gives up, if she backs down, now.

"I just want to find Arya and Jeyne," she insists. Jon's nostrils flare as he lets out a slow, irritated breath, and then he turns and begins walking. 

The cemetery comes first: crumbling, mossy headstones, worn so smooth by time that the names are lost; a wrought-iron fence that is pulled apart and destroyed; a statue of the Maiden, her arms broken off, her flowing dress spattered with graffiti. It looks like assault. Sansa walks faster. 

The old Sept caved in long ago, its windows shattered, its walls slowly succumbing to creeping vines that are crunchy and brown with autumn. When Jon and Sansa step through the front arch, Sansa is met with hostile, blaring music and the rank odor of piss. Someone in a hoodie and a sleeping bag is nodding off near the front. A group of teens, eyes bruised and missing teeth, are laughing but halt abruptly, and nod at Jon, and peer at Sansa with interest.

Why would Jeyne have ever come here? This is no place for her best friend. This is not a place of happiness. Another piece of the fictional worlds that Sansa has built up around herself to protect her is breaking off, and the world outside is so much sadder and angrier than she remembers.

They walk toward the altar, where a lean figure is slouched on it, holding court in an old black parka and a black beanie, and when Sansa hears his voice she realises, instantly, who it is, just as he turns to look back at them. 

"Sansa," Theon Greyjoy breathes, the sardonic humor draining from his face. He is so changed, so altered, from who he once was that she feels sick. And then he sees Jon, and his shoulders tense. "Snow." 

"Greyjoy. Outside," Jon orders. The teenagers that Theon was talking to— _why_ is Theon talking to teenagers here?—watch with blank looks as Theon grudgingly slides off the altar. "Now," Jon adds icily. The Theon she grew up with would have had a smirk and a snarky retort, but, as though whipped, Theon obediently follows them back outside. 

Tall grass grows around the old Sept, a forgotten meadow, and Jon leads them to the middle, far out of earshot. A young girl with short hair is watching them from one of the broken windows, but Sansa looks away from her. 

"God, Sansa," Theon blurts when she looks back at him. His dark eyes, once handsome, are shadowed as he hungrily rakes his gaze over her. "I can't believe it's you. Fuck." 

It would break Robb's heart to see Theon like this. No, worse. It would _kill_ him. She knew that drugs drove them apart, but she didn't know the details. When Theon reaches for a hug, Sansa catches Jon stiffen, but he doesn't do anything to stop them, and Sansa reluctantly returns the embrace.

Theon holds on for a long time; he holds on too tightly, like he is drinking her in greedily. Like a vampire, like a sponge. She can feel hard bones and can smell something foul and chemical, something wrong. She wants to let go, but the sight of him breaks her heart. He looks like he has had more than his share of misery; she doesn't want to hurt him further. He buries his face into her shoulder, and she feels her hair move with the motion, like he wants to wind his fingers in it. "H-how's Robb?" he asks when he finally lets go. 

"He's good," Sansa says, conscious of Jon looking between them. That chemical stench is strong, and nauseating. Jon's face is set into a look of disgust. "He's married, has a daughter." 

Something about this seems to break Theon. He abruptly turns and paces, pulling off his beanie and raking a hand through his greasy, dark thinning hair. 

"Married. Fuck." 

"When you're done," Jon cuts in rudely, "we came here for something." 

The anguish fades from Theon as he regards Jon warily, like Jon is a wild, unpredictable animal that has attacked him before. "Heard Jeyne Poole went missing, was last seen here," he explains. Sansa wants to jump in with Arya, but something tells her to keep her mouth shut for the moment. 

"Dunno how I can help you, Snow," he mutters, avoiding Jon's eyes. 

"I think you do," Jon says evenly. "Besides, you owe me." 

At this, Theon becomes more hunched, and he kicks at the dirt. 

"Dunno what you mean by that." 

"Yeah you do," Jon counters. His voice is soft. "Be glad that this is all I want." 

"I _didn't_ see her, Snow," Theon says, a little sharper now, a little more like his old self. "I heard she was hanging around here, but—" 

"—But he booked it when he heard _you_ got out," comes a voice. It's the short-haired girl from the window, approaching them. She nods to Jon. "Disappeared; only just came back today, actually." 

Theon looks pained; Jon looks...satisfied? Amused? Sansa cannot read his face. Vindicated, maybe? 

"Did you see her? Jeyne Poole?" Jon asks the girl. 

"Yeah, but only once. Seemed like she was in a bad way. Told the police," she says with a shrug. Sansa swallows the lump in her throat. 

"We're looking for another person," she says, because she likes the girl and she seems like she wants to help. "My sister's been missing." Sansa takes out her mobile, and shows a picture of Arya to the girl as she hears Theon draw in a sharp breath. The girl shakes her head. 

"Nope, sorry." She shrugs again, her hands stuffed in the pockets of her bomber. 

"What about any unusual cars?" Sansa tries, and the girl narrows her blue eyes. 

"Hmm. There was a red car, now that you mention it—oh, that's right." Her eyes light up and she grins at Sansa. "Only remember it 'cause the plate read, _Nymeria._ You know, like the—"

"—the warrior queen," Sansa finishes thickly. "Th-that's her car," she breathes, as something surges to life within her. "When was it here?" 

"Weeks ago," the girl says, wrinkling her nose, and whatever that something was dies abruptly. _Weeks ago_. "Can't really remember when or how long. Just remember the plate. ...Sorry." 

"Arya's missing?" Theon asks weakly, but Sansa can't deal with him right now. She blinks rapidly, trying to draw in a normal breath. The girl glances at Theon, almost impatiently, then looks back at Sansa. 

"No, that's... that's... great," Sansa finally forces out, her voice cracking. "That's so much more than I expected." And somehow less, too. Somehow crushingly less. It is a detail, but it is a detail that means nothing. 

"I can ask around," the girl offers with another shrug. "Dunno if anyone else noticed it, but there's always a chance." 

"Right. Yes. Please do." 

"Alright, come back in a few days. Name's Mya," she says. 

"Sansa," Sansa replies faintly. 

"Sansa," Mya repeats with a nod, like she's committing it to memory. "Right. Well, like I said, all I saw was the car on the road, just parked, and I noticed the plate so it stuck with me. But I don't remember anything else, and I dunno if anyone else will. No promises." 

Mya walks off, leaving the three of them in silence. Belatedly, Sansa realises her hands are shaking, so she fists them in her pockets. She feels curiously light-headed. All she wants to do is sit down somewhere quiet, by herself, and put her head between her knees and try not to throw up. 

"Sansa, I'm—"

Theon is reaching for her, but Jon cuts him off by stepping halfway in front of her. 

"You'll ask around, too. And we'll be back in a few days. I hope you have something for us," Jon says. Theon is gazing at her over Jon's shoulder miserably. 

"Tell Robb I said hello," he says. Sansa nods, and then Jon is leading her back toward the motorbike. She will do no such thing, for many reasons, and it is astounding that Theon would ask such a thing from her.

"Her car was here," Sansa manages to utter, as they pass through the cemetery. When she steals a look at Jon, he looks as haunted as she feels. 

"Why the fuck didn't she tell me she was here," he mutters, more to himself, and it is a relief to have someone else, finally, feel exactly as horrified by Arya's disappearance as she does. To finally have someone take it seriously, to not dismiss it. They walk to the motorbike and pause before it. "We'll talk at Rayder's," Jon says after a moment. "You need to explain more."

"I thought you said it was too dangerous for me," Sansa points out. Jon tosses her the helmet and she hastens to clumsily catch it. 

"Not with me," he says simply. 

* * *

It is dark when they finally pull to the pub perched halfway up that steep hill. Sansa recalls none of the ride back; it is jarring to take off the helmet and come back to reality. Her toes feel numb inside her boots. Arya was here. Arya _was here._

There's a group of men clustered outside on the steps, but when Sansa and Jon walk up the steps, they only nod, avoiding Sansa completely and muttering greetings to Jon. Sansa feels his hand firmly on her back, too low to be polite, and thinks again, _territorial_. There's a part of her that rankles at being marked as a possession, but there's another part of her that she won't examine that thinks a little differently. She has always known about this dark seam of hers; now is not the moment to examine it. 

"Lord Crow," the bartender, the same woman from last night, calls when they enter. It must be some inside joke, because Jon just shakes his head. The bar isn't crowded yet; the bartender is polishing glasses, and she smirks at Jon, then regards Sansa with a cool, calculating gaze. Sansa waves, then feels foolish for it, but it doesn't matter: Jon is guiding her across the bar, toward a table hidden behind the bar counter in a corner, out of the way and out of the light. 

"Sit there," he says, jerking his chin toward the chair in the corner, away from the bar. The bartender is sliding towards them. 

"You look like hell," she says bluntly to Sansa. "Looks like a whisky sort of night to me." 

"For her. Beer for me," Jon explains, and he reaches in his pocket but the bartender waves him off. 

"Forget it. Not every night I see my pretty crow on a date," she teases, but there's an edge to her words. Not jealousy, Sansa decides, as she watches her pour a glass of whisky. More like defense. Like she'll always hit first; like no one else will ever get the best of her. 

"Back off, Ygritte," Jon says, but there's no bite to it, as he shucks off his jacket. "I'll be right back. Can you make sure no one fucks with her?" He nods to Sansa, and Ygritte scoffs, rolling her eyes, as Jon heads up the stairs. 

Ygritte hops over the bar and lands gracefully on her feet, and then slides the whisky toward Sansa. 

"Hard day?" she asks. Sansa looks down at her glass of whisky. She doesn't know how to answer. 

"A weird day," she says at last, looking up and meeting Ygritte's light eyes. Ygritte is peering at her closely. "My sister is missing," Sansa explains, because sitting in silence feels rude. "Jon used to know her, so I came here to see if he'd heard from her. And it turns out he's looking for her too." 

"Course he is," Ygritte says immediately. "Jon's the only way anyone around here feels safe." 

"What do you mean?" Sansa presses. She can see Jon coming back down the stairs. She senses, somehow, that this is not a conversation Jon would be happy with them for having. Ygritte tilts her head to the side, her eyes narrowing into knowing crescents. 

"You're a fierce woman, now that I think on it," she says instead, sidestepping Sansa's question as Jon draws near. "You don't look it, no offense, but you're fierce." Jon has reached them, and Ygritte glances at him. "Mooton ale?"

Jon nods, and Ygritte swings back over the bar, leaving them alone. Jon drops into the seat across from her, raking a hand over his hair. Sansa suddenly feels embarrassed and anxious, and she reaches to fidget with her bird necklace (Jon's eyes begin following the movement but then break away)—but it isn't there. 

"Oh, no," she mutters, patting down her jumper. "I lost my necklace." It just adds to the sense of chaos, the sense of things breaking and snapping away, things that once held her in a cocoon. 

"A bird, right?" Jon recalls. "Your throat's got a red mark," he adds, studying her neck. "Must've got yanked off." 

"It doesn't matter," she says quickly, because it feels absurd to be worrying about a necklace right now. "I didn't even really like it, anyway." 

Jon looks almost amused. He settles back in his chair as Ygritte deposits the beer on the table before him and walks off again. Sansa wonders if Jon will want to toast, to be polite, but he simply drinks, so she does too. The burn of the alcohol is satisfying—relieving, almost. Maybe it will help her mind to stop racing, her hands to stop shaking.

"If you didn't like it, why were you wearing it?" Jon asks, pulling her back to the present. 

"Oh, it was a gift," Sansa explains. She thinks of Ramsay commenting on it this morning in the car. "And I think it was quite expensive, so I try to wear it sometimes, to be polite."

Jon snorts. 

"Polite?" He twists the beer glass on the table, like he's weighing his words, before leaning forward. "Is that why you let Greyjoy hug you? Is that why you're putting up with Bolton? To be polite?" 

"Theon was my brother's best friend for a long time," Sansa shoots back. "I didn't—I didn't _let_ him hug me." Jon's brows arch. 

"You looked like you wanted to crawl out of your skin," he parries. "With Greyjoy _and_ with Bolton." 

"There's nothing wrong with showing kindness to those who need it," she says defensively. And because she feels cornered and angry, she takes another long gulp of the whisky, and tries not to let herself cough. 

"Unless it puts you in danger. Greyjoy is a meth head." Jon pauses. "And I dunno what Bolton is, but he looks at you like you're a meal." 

"He told me you bullied him." She can't believe she's saying this, but Jon Snow seems to make her bolder. Or, maybe the whisky is making her feel looser. Maybe it's because that woman, Ygritte, told her she's fierce. Jon returns her stare archly. 

"Bullied," he scoffs.

"You chased him up a tree. Gave him black eyes." Jon rolls his eyes, but he doesn't deny it. "If he's so horrible, shouldn't you tell me why?" 

"I can't prove he's a threat to you," Jon admits reluctantly. "I can't prove he's a threat to anyone anymore. But I don't like him. Creepy fuck," he says disgustedly. "Used to catch him following girls home from school. Never did anything to them, never seemed to want anything more than to follow them, but..."

He trails off and toys with his glass, but he doesn't drink. "Whatever." 

They fall silent, and Sansa takes another gulp of the whisky. She is beginning to feel pleasantly loose and warm, and she lets out a long slow breath. She is aware of Jon watching her, like he's trying to read her. She hears him light a cigarette, and she drains the rest of the whisky. There is something welling up inside of her, and the whisky is letting it loose. She feels like she could breathe flame as the world lurches around her slightly. 

"I didn't want Theon to hug me, you're right," she blurts out. Oh, but it feels _good_ to say it.

To his credit, Jon doesn't react. He's leaning forward on his elbows, smoking and watching her. "Men always—they always _want_ something," she continues. "There's never any sense of—oh, I don't know. It never is real. It's always just, like, I'm here to fill some gap in their lives. Play some part. You know, you're the first man I've met in ages that has done something for me without making me feel like I owe something in return?" 

Jon still doesn't say anything. She meets his eyes. "I don't even date anymore, to be honest," she continues, because the floodgates have opened. "Ever since the stalking started, and—and I couldn't get anyone to take it seriously, except Arya—I just sort of started to hate men." 

Oh, but she has never let out this confession before. Men don't want to hear that you hate them, after all. And ladies aren't supposed to resent the part they are expected to play. She is breathless and bright as she watches Jon for his reaction, but he just lets out some smoke. "I stopped seeing the point of dates. Because you just feel their eyes on you and they say all these things, and you just wonder how much of it is their—their _payment_ —to get your clothes off." 

"Probably a lot of it," Jon agrees (is it her imagination or do his eyes flick to her throat again?) and Sansa slumps back in the chair. "How did the stalking start?" 

She is thrown off, but he seems to genuinely want to know. He's still watching her, smoking. 

"Well, I'm not sure," she admits, feeling embarrassed. Ygritte comes by and pours her more whisky, and Sansa waits until she's gone again. She wants Ygritte to continue to think she's fierce; she doesn't want her to overhear her whining about a stalker. Part of her, the drunk part, roars up in outrage: _I'm not whining!_ But the part of her that stood in the police department and watched those men lift that black silk dress out of the box knows that not everyone cares. 

(But Jon seems to care. Maybe? Why else would he ask? Oh, right. He just wants to understand where Arya might have gone. But still—that's more than any other man has wanted to know.)

She takes another long swig of the whisky, a greedy gulp that she knows she will regret. "It started with odd things: odd fanmail, odd emails. A few years ago, I suppose. I kept an eye on them, but I get a lot of strange emails from teen readers, so I didn't think much of it. Then it escalated. I started receiving anonymous gifts. At first they were small, meaningless: I think one was a set of coasters, or something, with dragonflies on them. Then they got stranger. I got a very expensive hair comb—antique, just the sort of thing I would like—and a bottle of the perfume I wear." 

"Seems personal," Jon agrees. 

"That was when I told Arya. We filed a police report, she taught me some self-defense, I changed the locks on my flat door and windows..." 

"What happened with the police report?" 

"Nothing, really. They told us they would investigate it, and every time I asked, they told me they hadn't found anything yet." 

"Was that necklace one of the gifts?"

"Oh, god no. That was from a family friend," Sansa sputters in disgust. "I wouldn't wear a stalker's gift because I felt bad." 

"You hugged a meth head because you _felt bad_ ," Jon points out dryly. "Ignoring your basic instincts to be polite." He looks like he might say more, but instead he takes another drag. "So when did Arya decide to take matters into her own hands?"

"It was a lot of things." She can feel her words growing sloppier now and she pushes at her hair, but it just feels so good to finally talk about it that she doesn't care how she comes across. She has protected most people from the worst of it: her parents and her siblings, aside from Arya, only have the most vague, benign notions of what's really been happening. "But one night I came home to my flat, and a lot of underwear was gone." 

Jon's face betrays nothing, so she continues. "The officers logged all of the information but... they seemed to find it funny." 

"I bet Arya loved that," Jon mutters, and Sansa's nose burns with the urge to cry with relief: relief that she is with someone who knows Arya, who loves her; relief that Jon is taking her seriously, or at least, keeping up the appearance of it. 

So she takes another long swig to hide her feelings, and then the glass is empty again. 

"Like I said: fierce," Ygritte's voice comes to her as Sansa sets the glass down. Ygritte has come over with the whisky bottle, and she's smirking at Sansa. "Never figured you'd be able to put away that much whisky, Fairy Princess." 

And then she reaches forward and takes Sansa's chin her strong hand, guiding her to meet her eyes. Her grip is damp and smells like alcohol, and makes Sansa's skin prickle with gooseflesh. Ygritte swims before her. "Oof. You're gonna sleep tonight—and feel like shite tomorrow." 

She lets go and holds up the bottle. "You want more?" She also shoots a discreet look at Jon, and Sansa realises she is being managed. 

"Yes, thanks much," she says loudly, even though it's the last thing she wants. She is tired of being polite. She is tired of being passive. Even thinking of how she let Arya handle so much of this problem makes her burn with shame. She's always the polite, passive one; she's always just letting things happen because she doesn't want to make anyone else feel uncomfortable, she doesn't want to seem pushy or overbearing, she doesn't want to make a mistake. She wants to seem ladylike. 

Why is she like this? 

Why is she not even the protagonist of her own life? 

"Maybe some water," Jon says as Ygritte pours and cackles. 

"You're just getting me drunk and making me talk," Sansa slurs when Ygritte walks away. Jon's lips twitch. 

"You seemed like you needed to talk but couldn't," he admits before taking a drag. "Arya used to do the same for me. Though I never guessed you'd drink that much, that fast." Sansa watches him taking another pensive drag.

"Can you even smoke that in here?" she asks loudly. Jon seems like he's trying not to laugh at her. "Isn't it, like, against the law?" 

"Laws don't mean much," he points out. 

Sansa puts her head in her hands as she tries to process the fact that she has drank more in one sitting than she has ever drank in her life. And her sister's car was spotted, but there's nothing she can do about that until (if) Mya finds out more. And Theon—Theon who was her first brush with sexual tension, Theon who made Robb laugh until he cried, Theon with the smooth lean arms and thick dark hair and once-bright, mean smile—is a meth head. And Jeyne is missing from a life that plainly cannot be happy, if she's hanging around with meth heads. And she's sitting, absolutely pissed, in a biker bar. And laws mean nothing, and police do not care, and she is maybe not the protagonist of her own life. 

"I need to go home," she says into her hands. 

"Yeah, I think you do." 

It is a blur now. The bar is louder, more chaotic, but no one so much as looks at her as Jon guides her out the door and into the biting autumn air. Sansa concentrates very hard on walking down the steps without tripping. 

"M'gonna go to the hotel," she announces, mopping at her face. 

"No, you're going with me," Jon says as they walk towards his bike. "Not letting you back to Bolton like this," he mutters under his breath. 

"Not _letting_ me?" she asks loudly. Jon hands her the helmet and she focuses on not dropping it. 

"You'll sleep in my bed, I'll take the couch. Or I can sleep at my neighbor's, if that's what you're worried about," Jon says, rolling his eyes. "Sansa, please believe I do not expect anything from you. I can even ask Ygritte to come by after her shift, if that would make you feel better. But I'm not letting you go back to the hotel like this, alone." 

Sansa closes her eyes and sways on her feet.

"I'm the protagonist," she informs him, opening her eyes again. Jon nods slowly. 

"Sansa," he says, "put on the helmet." 

"You don't understand."

"I definitely do not," he says, shaking his head. "Put on the fucking helmet. Do you want me to get Ygritte to come by or not?" 

She thinks of Jon muttering, _basic instincts_. She thinks of Ramsay's soft touch on her arm. She thinks of the mechanics circling him like wolves. 

"S'alright," she says, and Jon lets out a huff, his breath clouding in the air. "I shouldn't trust you but I do. Ima go home with you." 


	5. old number seven

She was moving but now she's not. It takes Sansa a lurching moment to realise her arms have been wrapped around someone. Oh, right. Everything smells like fire and pine as the world comes to a stop. She remembers that a few minutes ago—or a few hours ago?—someone was telling her to hold on (maybe?) and then she remembers it is Jon Snow she is holding onto. She was just thinking of something but she cannot grasp what it was; she only knows that Jon feels lean and strong through the fabric of his jacket, and that she feels very warm and very dangerous. 

"Here." When he speaks, her fingertips vibrate along his skin. Sansa looks up from his shoulder. They've reached a narrow street where the houses are set far back from the road, and wide spaces yawn between them. Jon's house is squat and small, with chopped logs lining the side. A ways away, she can see the neighbor's light flicker on in the distance, and then there's a man walking out onto the porch, silhouetted by the warm light. 

"Your house's lonely," she says, because she thinks he ought to know this. "Like my flat. They should get together, I'll write a story 'bout it." 

"Have you ever been drunk before?" Jon wonders irritably as he helps Sansa stumble off his bike. He's pulling off her helmet like she's a little kid who needs help undressing, and he reaches out and grips her arm to stop her from swaying. 

"Yes!" she says loudly, because _of course_ she's been bloody drunk before, she just can't remember when, can she? That just seems unrealistic to ask a person, and she's about to inform him of that when gravel crunches underfoot. Jon is still gripping her as he looks over his shoulder. An older man with thinning grey hair and a wry smile behind a mustache is approaching them. 

"Well, this looks like you've gotten yourself in a pickle, Snow," he remarks, hands on his hips. "Never seen hair like that," he adds, nodding to Sansa's hair. "Lighting up the whole neighborhood, you are."

"I'm the protagonist," she introduces herself, leaning against Jon as she stumbles, and she feels Jon scoff. 

"Ah. Of course. The protagonist?" the man wonders, looking amused and puzzled. She gets the sense he is humoring her, and it makes her angry, even though he actually seems quite kind. _Men_. God, they're so condescending. She wants to tell him so, but then she forgets what she was going to say, and Jon is already guiding her away. 

"Forget it, I've really got no idea. I'll see you later, Davos," Jon says over his shoulder. 

They walk along the uneven grass, and Sansa smells fire and the woods, and leans against Jon because it feels good. "Look, I've got a dog," he begins. 

"Congratulations," she mutters. They reach the front wooden steps, sagging wood painted with peeling grey paint, which lead onto an empty porch. It's a place where there ought to be chairs and discarded toys, but there's only more firewood and a single chair and table. A knife sits on the table, with curls of wood shavings littering the space around it. Sansa buries her face in the crook of Jon's neck as he unlocks the door, because he smells so good and the warmth of his skin through the cotton of his shirt is just what she craves: the whisky gave her an appetite that only the scent and feel of his skin can sate. 

The screen door opens with a metallic rattle, and she's just thinking that she wants to make fun of him for being _soooo bloody proud_ of having a dog when he opens the door and an enormous white wolf is standing there. Sansa shrieks and almost falls over. "That is _not a dog_!" 

"That's Ghost," Jon explains, amused, as he helps Sansa inside. 

The enormous dog doesn't jump on her, but instead very elegantly lays down on the floor in front of them, poised like a sphinx, regarding Sansa as she clings to Jon. 

"I-is he ...well-behaved?" There's something niggling at her, and she doesn't know why she's thinking of Ramsay and jaws, so she puts it out of her mind. Jon laughs softly. 

"He does what he wants," he says with a shrug. "He's too smart to obey me." 

That is utterly discomforting, but Jon is dropping his keys on a little square table. Sansa looks around the little front room: small television that looks from another era, and there's a rifle hanging by the door and a few paperbacks stacked on the floor by the sofa, which faces the doorway to the bedroom. 

"Did Davos watch him when you were in jail?" she wonders, and somehow Ghost is leaning on her leg and she is scratching the top of his head. She doesn't remember him standing up, but, come to think of it, she doesn't remember quite how they got inside, either.

"Smart girl," Jon says. "Ghost, out of the way." 

It's all a blur: Jon is leading her through that doorway to the bedroom. The old hardwood floors creak beneath their feet as they go, and Sansa's shoulder hits the doorframe on the way, and Jon swears. "It's like holding fucking jell-o," he curses, and then he's setting Sansa on the bed. 

It's a narrow bed, and from Sansa's vantage point she can see the sagging sofa and the front door. The sheets are dark, and there's nothing more than a lamp sitting on a stool used in place of a nightstand. Jon kneels before her, between her legs, and then he's taking her coat off her.

In the darkness his lashes and mouth are even prettier. When she struggles out of the coat, it yanks down the neckline of her jumper, revealing her shoulder, and the rough palm of Jon's hand brushes her skin. Sansa feels a pleasurable clench at the contact, and her head swims with dizzying heat. 

"You really think Ramsay'd do something?" she wonders. 

Jon doesn't reply right away: he pulls the coat out from under her, and hangs it on the door by its hood before kneeling before her again between her legs. His shoulder brushes the inside of her thigh, and Sansa feels that same quick ache again. 

"I think he's a man who feels like women have denied him what they owe him," Jon says, surprising her with his thoughtful reply as he pulls off her ankle boots. "And also, I think he's a man." His dark eyes are roving over her jumper, and Sansa flushes as he bites his lip. 

" _You're_ a man," she points out. Jon's gaze flicks from her jumper to her eyes. 

"I won't hurt you," he says evenly. Sansa tilts her head as the room spins; the only thing that stays in one place is Jon.

"So women haven't denied you?"

She doesn't know if her tone is teasing enough. Somehow, very far off, another Sansa is whispering a warning: _you are going too far_. This isn't ladylike. This is pushy, and pathetic, and needy. But she is here, now, and she's the protagonist, after all, so she will make the mistakes she feels like making, dammit. "Like my sister?" 

Jon tilts his head slightly, mirroring her movement and studying her. She feels on display, and if she weren't so drunk, it would humiliate her. She feels like she has let go of something she had been holding onto; she feels like she has spoiled a secret she was keeping. 

"It was never like that with Arya," he says, and then, with a sly twist of his mouth, "and no, I don't feel too denied." And then he's biting his lip again. "You have something on underneath that?" 

"My..." she searches for the word, "chemise...thing..." Is that the right word? Or is chemise a food? Jon gets up and goes to a set of drawers, and pulls out a tee shirt. 

"You can wear my shirt to sleep in," he explains, kneeling between her legs again and leaning forward again. "I have a feeling you've got a rough night and morning ahead of you. Take off your jumper. I won't look." His hands are at the hem of her jumper, helping her to guide it over her head. She struggles out of it and the cool air hits her skin. 

"So polite," she says thickly, "ignoring your basic instincts." He said that earlier, didn't he? Or did she dream it? Did she make it up?

"Baser, more like," Jon mutters under his breath, letting out a ragged breath, but he's still looking away, even as a hint of a grin plays on his lips.

He hands her the tee, but she needs help getting it over her head. It smells like him and is worn impossibly soft; it feels good, too, the cotton cool against her flushed skin. His hands brush her sides, along the silk of her chemise, as he helps her straighten it out, and he has to lean forward, his lean sides brushing the inside of her thighs, and something molten unfurls deep within her. She wants him to keep going, to grip her jaw in his hand and run his teeth over her lip; she wants him to press her against the wall and whisper what he'd like to do to her in her ear as he unzips her jeans, and slip those rough fingers between her legs; she wants... 

She slumps back against the wall, staring at him, and she knows that he knows what she's thinking, because he shakes his head slightly. 

"You could have looked," she breathes, because she wishes he had. In her sober moments, this dark seam within her is unbearable and shameful to her; it makes her think that she has brought the stalker upon herself. After all, if she is a woman who wants Jon to flip her over and grip her hips and take her—if she is a woman who likes Jon's hand so low and so possessive on her back—is she not, therefore, a woman who seeks violence and pain, who deserves whatever bad things happen to her? But in this moment, the two seem perfectly unrelated, and there is nothing shameful about what she wants from Jon. Of course she wants him to do those things; it has no relation to the stalker. 

"The Sansa I've heard so much about would not want me to look, no matter how much I might want to," Jon says quietly, and he reaches forward and pulls a hank of her hair out of the collar of the tee. Her hair slides along her skin, and his hand brushes her neck. "And for her sake I hope you're drunk enough to forget this conversation, because I have a feeling it would make her want to die." 

"That Sansa wants you, too," she argues, and Jon laughs, shaking his head. 

"That Sansa can have me, if she really does want me," he says, "but this one can't." 

"You don't want me?" 

He just laughs again, that sardonic laugh that is maddening and rewarding all at once. 

"I like my women conscious." 

"Ugh. The honorable ex-con. What a cliche," she complains, pushing at her hair, but there's a heaviness to her limbs, and somehow she finds herself slumping sideways on the bed. Everything smells like fire and pine, and Jon's pillow is soft, and Jon's hands are gentle as he shifts her further onto the bed, and pulls the covers out from under her. "I bet you were wrongfully imprisoned," she mutters into the pillow. Jon's hand is on her hip as he yanks the sheets out from under her. She is aware that she is damp with longing. That's what that little clench is: longing, not fear. Anticipation, not apprehension. How did she _ever_ think otherwise? "I bet you've never done anything wrong." 

The sheets and blanket cover her, another burst of his scent, and then he's crouching before her again, gripping her shoulder to set her more completely on the pillow. 

"I've done plenty wrong," he admits, his voice soft as a kiss. "Ghost, to me." 

The mattress shifts with new weight, and then there's something on her hip. "That's it, boy," Jon says, reaching to scratch Ghost's head. Ghost is against her back, his chin resting on her hip, so that she cannot turn over. Sansa turns back into the pillow and closes her eyes, breathing in Jon's scent. "I'll be in the other room," he whispers, but his voice is already fading, fading, fading... 

* * *

Sansa wakes with a lurch, as though she's been slapped, but when she lifts her head the room is blue with darkness, and there's a massive shape behind her, resting on her hip. Whisky, a golden bar, trees blurring in the night, Jon's hands... She has a sinking feeling, like the beginning of depression: that hollow, hopeless anxiety that she has never been alright and never will be alright... and then her stomach gurgles loudly, and her head throbs like an axe has cleaved it, and she groans. 

From here, she can see Jon asleep on the couch. He's lying on his back, arms crossed over his chest, head tilted toward the back of the sofa. 

There's a glass of water and some plain crackers on the stool beside the bed, and when she shifts to sit up, she hears Jon's voice from the other room. 

"Sip it," he warns her, tilting his head towards her, his voice gravelly with sleep. A light sleeper. "Don't chug it, even if you want to." 

She does as she's told, resisting the urge to greedily gulp the water, and gingerly gets out of bed. In the dark, Ghost peers at her before noiselessly leaping off the bed and following her into the bathroom. 

She almost screams. She looks a fright: hair wild and slightly greasy, skin sallow; the worst part is that she feels nauseated, and she cannot bear the idea of vomiting in Jon's bathroom. She turns off the harsh fluorescent light and sits on the edge of the tub and massages her temples. 

"A shower might help." Sansa looks up; in the blue darkness, Jon is leaning on the doorframe to the bathroom, looking down at her as he mops at his face. His hair is wild and he looks more boyish in the black tee, a hole in its neckline, even if it does stretch appealingly across his chest with his movement. "And then you can go and sleep it off." 

"Thanks." She covers her face. She can only remember bits and pieces: Ygritte gripping her chin; something about her loudly saying she is the protagonist; a kindly man with a mustache; Jon helping her out of her jumper (oh, _god,_ she prays her deodorant held out until then because it certainly hasn't now).

But there's a niggling sense, like she is forgetting something, something bad, but she's not sure if that's simply the feeling of dread that her hangover has brought her. "How bad was I? I didn't... I didn't say anything too bad, right?" She remembers feeling loose-tongued as she confessed to Jon all about her stalker, about how she hates men, and she cringes from the memory, but she hears Jon laugh. 

"You were more argumentative than usual, but no," he promises. "You didn't say anything bad at all." 

"I'm so sorry," she groans into her hands. "I don't have much experience with whisky." 

"Couldn't tell," Jon says sarcastically. 

She showers in Jon's tidy, shabby shower, and then changes back into his shirt and her jeans, leaving her chemise off this time, and crawls back into bed. Ghost jumps on the bed with her, resuming his place behind her legs, chin on her hip. Jon is back on the sofa, and he's on his side, asleep, and she feels a flicker of tenderness that she clings to as she drifts back towards sleep, studying his sleeping face. Arya loved this man, and it is no wonder. 

* * *

When Sansa next wakes, it's to a strong hand on her shoulder, shaking her. Sansa groans and opens her eyes. Jon is sitting on the edge of the bed, and Sansa can hear men's voices from the other room, though the bedroom door is now closed. 

She looks up at Jon. There's an energy to him, a fierceness. 

"Sansa, wake up, now," Jon orders, his voice hard. "Get dressed. Giantsbane thinks he found Arya's car." 

And then she is wide-awake, and doesn't even feel how her gut is churning or her head is pounding. "In the creek," Jon adds. "But it might not be hers. The plate's gone. We need to go and have you see it before the cops find out about it and close it off." 

Oh, god. Sansa sits up and stares at Jon. 

"If is hers..." 

"Let's just go see it," Jon insists, shaking his head. 

Sansa dresses. Her jumper and duffle coat smell like smoke and whisky, and her skin is sallow, but she doesn't care. Her breastbone aches with how hard her heart is pounding, and she doesn't even care when she explodes out of the bedroom to find several men standing there with Jon. She recognises two of them: the large, fiery-bearded man and the skinny one with large ears that she saw at Mormont Mechanic, but there are more, all of them with hard faces and flinty eyes; all of them look deferentially to Jon. 

"Tormund'll lead the way," Jon says, snatching up his keys as they all head out into the bracing morning. Before she knows it, she's holding onto Jon as the bike roars along the winding road, going south, past Winter Town. Sansa can see the rooftop of the Dreadfort in the distance as they drive into ever-thickening woods, but then it's gone, and there's just the trees. She holds onto Jon tighter than yesterday, because he's driving much faster, and even though it's terrifying, she's grateful for it, because it keeps up with her racing thoughts. 

They slow to a stop deep in the woods, where the ground cleaves to an enormous creek, a tributary to the river. An old, wrought-iron bridge that once spanned the creek now twists and morphs into mid-air, its iron tangled like wires. It takes Sansa a moment to realise, once Jon turns off the ignition, that that roaring is the sound of rushing water. Ahead, the red-bearded man, Tormund, is already getting off his bike. 

_No_. Not here. Her hands are shaking. If it's Arya's car... she's either drowned, or somewhere worse.

If it's Arya's car, she is probably not alive. But how could it be? Arya was a good driver; a fast one, but a safe one. Arya would never have cause to crash her car. Sansa's keen mind races with the possibilities as she and Jon walk to the bank. 

It's a long drop to white frothy water; the creek is creek in name only, and is wide and wild as a river. And there among the rocks is a ruined red Audi, Arya's pride and joy, the car she saved up for for years, the only 'thing' that Arya has ever held in such high esteem. 

"Sansa, _wait_ —"

Jon follows her as Sansa begins sliding down the side of the bank without even thinking, boots sinking into cold mud, as she grips rocks and roots. The car is closer to this side of the bank, crushed among the large rocks just before the falls. The icy spray hits her face as she stares; the plate is indeed gone, but she knows it is Arya's car: the Batman symbol bumper sticker is visible in the cracked rear window. "Sansa, you're going to—"

She doesn't listen to Jon. She splashes through the rocks, and lurches for the door. The driver's side window is shattered, and little shards of glass crackle and dissipate as Sansa leans in. She knows what she is looking for but she does not know what she will find, and she has no time to prepare herself. 

Arya's army-green backpack, covered with buttons and patches, is open and sprawled across the passenger seat, and everything glitters with broken glass in the weak sunlight. There is no body here, no sign of a bloody fight; but Arya's presence is all over the car. But where is the sign she is looking for? Where is the—

_There._

Oh, fuck. 

She cannot stop the sharp, shaking breath she sucks in. She registers Jon catching up to her, his hand on her back, but she claps a hand over her mouth. 

"I knew it," she breathes through her fingers. 

There is an old brick on the floor near the gas. 

Arya has been taken; and Sansa's instincts—however good or bad they may be; she does not know yet—scream at her that, somewhere, somehow, Arya is _alive_. 


	6. a little wicked

They spend the morning combing the forest surrounding the creek, looking for a sign of Arya. Sansa and Jon lead the charge, and Sansa doesn't realise that everyone is just following her until, at one point, she almost slips into a ravine and Jon has to roughly grab the back of her coat to stop her. When he helps her back to the edge, she realises they are all behind her, watching her warily. Like she is a force. Like she is an unknown variable. 

(She has never been an unknown variable. She has always been background scenery, pale as watercolor and just as fragile.)

Whoever weighed down the gas pedal and drove her Audi into the creek—whether it was Arya, as Sansa half-suspects (and Jon cautiously agrees it's a possibility) or someone else—left no other evidence that they had ever been there at all. But somehow Sansa does not feel any sense of despair or hopelessness; instead, only an urgency and certainty that is as rushing and loud as the falls, urging her onward. 

The men help them, and Sansa learns their names: Tormund is the tall, red-bearded one who is older than Jon and clearly the second in command to Jon. He has an easy manner—until they are searching the forest, and then he is intent and focused, his voice brusque and short. Then there's Edd, a dour-faced man with long greasy hair who is quiet but for the occasional drawling, pessimistic remark; despite this, Sansa notes that Jon often turns to Edd, seeking his thoughts, so there must be more to him than meets the eye (he has, to her shock and delight, met Arya, and agrees she would have been clever enough to crash her own car, potentially to save herself). Then there's Pyp, the skinny, large-eared mechanic she met at Mormont's, who has bright eyes and a quick wit; and his friend Grenn, who is broad and blunt but asks her, repeatedly, if she is alright as they walk, until Edd finally snarls at him that Sansa can take care of herself and to stop bloody asking. 

And they all look at Jon like he's their leader, like he's their _king_ , and she wonders, again, how a man like this ended up in jail. 

At mid-morning, Jon's neighbor Davos joins them, and winks at Sansa. 

"Morning," he greets Sansa. "How's our protagonist's head?" 

Sansa flushes. She has the vaguest memory of saying that word, and of meeting Davos, and she has a feeling it's a good thing she can't remember much more. 

(But what else is she forgetting? Jon promised she said nothing bad, but what if he's only being kind?)

"I'm well, thank you," she mutters. 

But eventually the sun is high in the sky and they're running into hikers who are categorically unprepared for a group of roaming bikers, and they decide they have searched the woods enough—there are no other signs of Arya here. Tormund and Pyp have to go back to work, and Jon agrees to trade some hours later in the week with another mechanic. They all agree to meet at Jon's in the evening, to plan their next move. 

"So what now?" Sansa asks, still vibrating with the high of finding Arya's car.

"Dreadfort," Jon says, tossing Sansa the helmet. "You need to pick up your things." 

"I'm not drunk now," Sansa points out. "You really don't think I should stay at the hotel?" 

"I really don't," Jon says, voice metallic through the helmet. His voice brooks no argument, but Sansa thinks of the force that propelled her almost blindly down the creekbank, despite the danger, and something makes her dig her heels in. 

She wants to feel like a force of nature, like an unknown variable. 

"Well, I think it's fine," she argues, though her voice lacks the certainty she needs to be compelling. She doesn't even _want_ to stay at the hotel, but she feels like she did when she first learned to drive, or the way her characters feel when they discover their new power in a dusty tome in their school's library; when they first draw their magic sword from the stone. She has a new power, and she will wield it—however clumsily. 

Jon looks amused. "I'm staying at the Dreadfort," she informs him, her voice a little unsteady. 

"No, you're not." 

"Unless you can give me a good reason not to," she counters, "I'm staying there."

"Alright," Jon says calmly, and he takes off the helmet. "You obviously want to play this game—fine. We'll play it." 

"It's not a game," she shoots back, a flush creeping up her neck. Jon's grey eyes flick to her neck, then to her face again. "I've—I've had it with your cryptic orders," she finishes lamely. "You need to actually explain things to me. I'm not just one of your followers."

Jon raises his brows at her.

"Fine. I think the more men we've got looking for your sister, the more notice we'll attract," he explains shortly. "You must have thought of this too. And whoever's been going around Winter Town kidnapping women is on the hunt for women your age—vulnerable women, women left alone. And maybe it's also occurred to you that the Dreadfort is out of the way, and for you to get anywhere without your car or without me, you need to either walk, alone, or get in the car of a man who has a record of following women."

"Yes, obviously all that did occur to me," she says, and Jon's brow—the scarred one—quirks. "But I just wanted you to communicate it." 

He tilts his head and regards her. 

"You thought I might have some other reason for making you stay at my place?" 

She can't tell if he's teasing or not, but then he puts on the helmet again, and she's got no choice but to do the same. "We'll go to the hotel and you can get your things and check out," Jon says as she climbs on behind him. He looks back over his shoulder. "If you're not comfortable, I can stay at Davos' and you can stay at my place, with Ghost." 

Why does it almost sound like he's baiting her? Or is it just her imagination? "I'll do whatever you want," he continues. "But you can't staying at the Dreadfort. It's not safe, not anymore." 

He starts the bike, and then they're flying through the woods again, and she has no choice but to wrap her arms around him and hold on. She thinks of the shattered windows of the Audi, of Arya's Batman sticker, of the Nymeria plate that is surely washed somewhere further down the creek. She wanted to take Arya's bag with her—the idea of just leaving it there in the wrecked car seems so lonely—but it seemed more important to preserve the scene of the crime, so to speak, but her heart aches the further they drive from the wrecked car. 

She has to find Arya. She _will_ find Arya. 

At the Dreadfort, the reception area is empty. Ramsay is nowhere to be found, nor is his dog, and Sansa leads Jon along the halls to her room in tense quiet. Why is he missing from the front desk? Maybe it means nothing, but after twenty-four hours with Jon, she finds herself beginning to wonder about Ramsay, too. 

She unlocks her bedroom door, keenly aware of Jon behind her. Her suitcase lays open on the bed from when she rifled through it for clothes to wear to go with Jon to the old Sept yesterday, and she hastily hides a bra underneath a pair of jeans, hoping Jon doesn't see it.

"You might as well shower while we're here," Jon says, dropping into a baroque chair by the hearth and taking out a cigarette. "I can tell you want to," he adds, unlatching one of the windows and letting in a blast of crisp air. 

"Thank you," Sansa says self-consciously. She watches him light the cigarette. "How many of those do you smoke in a day?" she wonders. 

"As many as I need," Jon says with an edge to his voice, avoiding her eyes suddenly.

In the bathroom, she strips out of her muddy jeans and her greasy jumper and chemise with relief and waits, naked, for the water to grow hot. She's still a little weak and shaky from the hangover, but it's dissipating, and the hot water helps burn away the churning, wobbly feeling, leaving her stronger, sturdier.

Arya is somewhere. She knows it. She is more certain than ever. She just doesn't know what to do next, but she feels a curious resolve. It'll come to her—she just hopes she figures it out in time. She showers quickly and blow-dries her hair, and as she's smoothing her hair, she realises her mistake. 

She didn't bring in any clothes into the bathroom. 

She could just put on her old clothes, but they're muddy and slept-in, and the idea skeeves her too much. She wraps the fluffy white towel around herself as tightly as she can. No matter, she'll just slip out and grab her things. She'll just tell Jon to look the other way. He's a good man, after all. It doesn't have to be a big deal.

"Don't look," she orders through the door as she cracks it. "I forgot to bring in clothes." 

"Alright." 

Jon is staring out the window, smoking, as she hurries to her open suitcase, and rifles through her things, first for a pair of underwear. "Everything alright?" he asks, sounding terse. He's still looking out the window, but he must have noticed her pawing through her things for too long.

All girlish sense of embarrassment has abruptly receded, and she is left with that skin-crawling sensation that she got when she received that black silk dress. 

She unsticks her lips. 

"My underwear's gone," she admits, as levelly as she can. She wants to be a force. Why doesn't she feel like a force right now? Jon looks at her sharply, manners forgotten. "All of it." 

And then there's a creak, and they both freeze, and look toward the door, and she pictures the hall beyond it. Is it simply the creaking of a very old house? The footfalls of another guest? Her stomach is churning as Jon noiselessly gets to his feet, watching the door. There's another creak.

There is undoubtedly someone listening on the other side of the door. 

She remembers Jon advising her to let Ramsay know she was with another man, yesterday, and that's when she has the idea. _Like bait_ , Jon had also said, voice like a caress. 

She knows how to be bait. It's a foolish idea, and maybe it will accomplish nothing, but she cannot do nothing anymore. "Maybe I don't need it," she begins slowly, and she prays her discomfort sounds like breathy arousal.

Jon shoots her a sharp look, and she mouths, _play along_ , and he nods. "Not if I'm going to be with you," she adds.

She has never written a sex scene, for a very specific reason, so she's not quite sure of what to say, and there has never been even a sliver of _dirty talk_ with any of her previous boyfriends. "Not if you're going to fuck me like you did last night." 

Jon's eyes look almost black and she watches him comprehend what she is trying to do. 

"I'm gonna fuck you all week, just like I did last night," he promises, just loud enough for their eavesdropper to hear. She clutches the towel to herself and tries not to react, tries to pretend his words have no effect on her. _Not apprehension_ , she thinks out of nowhere, _but anticipation_. She has a swerving sense of deja vu as something molten unfurls in the pit of her belly. "You won't need clothes at all." 

When there's another creak just outside her door, he has that same cold look she glimpsed when Mya told them Theon had been avoiding Jon. A grim satisfaction, a vindicated suspicion. A dark, smug look tainted with disgust. 

They wait, and soon hear the swing of the door to the stairs, and then heavy, booming footfalls down the stairs. Sansa watches Jon let out a shaking breath; Ramsay (if that was indeed him) seems to enrage him beyond words. 

"Anything else missing?" Jon asks, after they both recover. Sansa swallows and turns back to her suitcase. 

"I don't think so," she says, watching him turn from her and clear his throat. 

She looks back down at her things. Even touching the things she loves—her favourite pajamas, her workhorse jumper that looks a little worn but always works—makes her feel sick. Someone—maybe Ramsay Bolton, maybe someone else— has touched these things, with the intent to scare her, to hurt her, to humiliate her. She remembers the cops in her bedroom, smirking as she explained, face burning and voice shaking, that even her used underwear was gone from the hamper. She remembers watching them exchange little amused looks. 

"Let me just hand-wash the ones I had on," she says, trying to keep her voice even. "I'll dry them with my hairdryer." 

"There's a few shops on high street; we can stop on the way for new ones," Jon says, settling on the edge of the bed next to the suitcase, and their eyes meet.

There is a moment where they must acknowledge the discomfort of what they just did, and Sansa prays he cannot read her thoughts too well. On top of everything else, she feels like she just stumbled into an epiphany, and she is afraid he can see it on her face. That dark seam is exposed, just as whoever took her underwear has made her feel exposed. The two are entangled. She wants him to reach forward and rip away the towel and promise he'll fuck her again, and by the darkness in his eyes and the roughness in his voice, it almost feels like he just might, and then there's that clench of something between anticipation and apprehension, a flutter between her legs, at the thought of it. 

(Has she brought this on herself?)

(The thought of a man pawing through her underwear makes her sick; the thought of Jon pulling down her towel, even though she has asked him to not even look at her, makes her feel something very different. Where is the seam between the two?)

Jon matches her gaze carefully. "You look embarrassed," he observes. The smoke from his forgotten cigarette is rising between them. 

"I don't exactly relish discussing the logistics of washing my underwear with a man I don't actually know very well," she admits. 

"That creep was going through your stuff," Jon counters roughly, and he takes a long drag. "Focus on that," he adds in a low voice.

"I am," she says, voice taut. "And I'm angry that on top of that, I get to be embarrassed, too." 

She thinks for a moment. "And we don't know it was _him_." 

"He's concerned enough with you to listen in on your bedroom conversations," Jon points out in a quick, low voice. "And to get angry at the thought of you with another man. That was some fast thinking, by the way."

"My stalker also took my underwear," she counters just as fast, ignoring the compliment. "We don't know it was Ramsay." 

All these predators. The minute she discovers her own strength, she gets reminded of her own weakness. "Why? What do they want with me?" she wonders furiously, and she covers her face and draws in a deep breath. 

"You're generous and forgiving," Jon says, drawing her from her thoughts, "and creepy fucks like Bolton look at you and see a mirror." 

She lowers her hands and meets Jon's eyes again. His eyes are darker, the pupils wider. Probably from anger, she decides. 

"So it's my fault, then?" The anger is rising, rising, rising, but Jon shakes his head. 

"Did I say that?" he snaps, and she is surprised by the heat of it. Something about the way his voice twists makes her think he feels cornered somehow, though she is the one, technically, who is cornered. 

He looks away at last, and she sees the first real sign of his anger: he blows out a stream of smoke with force as he looks back toward the door with a look that makes her think, again, of a snarling wolf. Gooseflesh prickles along her skin. 

"I'll get dressed," she forces out, and she turns from him at last.

She hand-washes her underwear in the sink and dries it with her hair-dryer, and then changes into fresh clothing. Her head's a mess. Why this, now? Is it a threat from Arya's captor? Or has her stalker followed her here? ...Or has Ramsay been lurking, just like Jon suspects?

The front desk is thankfully empty, and Sansa decides to check out over the phone, and she and Jon walk back to his bike. It's lucky that her bag is small, and can fit on the back of the bike. Sansa helps Jon secure it, and then they're getting on the bike together. 

"You said they see a mirror," she begins, sliding onto the bike behind him. This has been bothering her. "When they look at me, I mean. You said men like Ramsay see a mirror." 

"Yeah?" Jon adjusts his helmet. 

"What do you see when you look at me?" she wonders. 

Through the plastic she can see that wry half-smile in a flash before he's looking forward again, getting ready to start the bike. 

"I see you," is all he says. 


	7. lavender moon

Ghost is waiting for them when they return to Jon's house that afternoon, and Davos is just stepping off the porch when Jon parks the bike.

"The wife sent over some leftovers," Davos explains, nodding back towards the house. "Took a look in your fridge, Snow, and you had nothing in."

Jon looks embarrassed, and Sansa is surprised to see such a look. It makes him seem younger, less like this man of mystery and more like a normal man, one with failings and insecurities. Davos is smiling fondly at Jon. "It's not an easy transition, I know," he says more gently now. "No matter how long or short the time was. You forget how to be a person. Don't go getting upset now."

"I didn't forget anything, and I'm not getting upset," Jon snaps stubbornly, and Sansa sees a flash of the surly, rebellious teenager that once slipped in and out of her awareness like smoke. But he glances at Sansa, seeming to remember himself. "You know I've always been crap at all that," he adds, with a dismissive shake of his head and a one-shouldered shrug.

"Tell your wife I said thank you," Sansa steps in. Davos grins.

"You've always been crap at courtesies too, Snow. You could learn a thing or two from the lady," he adds wryly, though Sansa can tell he's teasing. "Which reminds me," Davos says suddenly, turning to Sansa, "the wife also told me to tell you to come by if you need anything. I told her Snow'll take good care of you, but seeing as she only sees him when he needs stitches or is on the verge of starvation, you can't blame her for worrying."

"I only needed stitches once," Jon says, and he begins walking back toward the house. At his approach, Ghost slips out the front door and passes Jon to greet Sansa.

"See, Snow, even the dog thinks her manners're better," Davos calls, and Jon scoffs as he keeps walking. Davos crouches down, ruffling Ghost's fur, as Jon's front door closes with a metallic smack. "He never takes mention of the jail time well," Davos mutters.

"I haven't asked him about it," Sansa says carefully as Davos straightens, and Ghost nudges her hand for attention. Davos looks thoughtfully toward Jon's front door.

"You seem to handle him well," he says, rubbing at his silvery beard. "Trust your instincts and feel him out. He's got to talk about it sometime, or it'll eat him from the inside."

"Was it bad?"

She doesn't know if this is the question she really means, or if it's even an appropriate question to ask, but Davos only looks thoughtful.

"It's not my business to tell you; he's got to be the one. I will say it happened for the wrong reasons," he says at last. "Snow does things on his terms, and that wasn't on his terms. And the charges... Well, I think he had thoughts of doing something more with his life at one point, but that set him back hard."

"Something more?"

"Oh, I don't know what I'm on about," Davos blusters, suddenly quite vague. He seems to realise he has tread too far, so Sansa offers a smile.

"Don't worry, I won't let him know you said even a word on it," she promises.

When she and Ghost enter, Jon is putting a white dish in his oven. Only the kitchen light is on, and it casts a golden glow across the rest of the little house. Sansa stands in the doorway, looking from the rifle on the wall, to the ashtray on the kitchen table, to the old hiking boots by the door. Outside, the afternoon light is fading, and in dusk the woods look silver. Sansa can see a fire in Davos' yard. Blue smoke drifts over the brown leaves.

She doesn't quite know how to be with Jon now. It was bad, earlier, when they stopped at a line of shops on the high street. Jon waited outside with his bike and her bag while she slipped in and bought the first pack of underwear she could find, a three-for-one deal of peony-pink lace that she immediately jammed in her purse, declining a bag from the shop. Jon didn't comment when she came out, and, thankfully, didn't comment on her flushed face either.

"When the others get here, we'll have to tell them what happened," Jon says then, as though reading her mind, as he sets a timer on the oven. "We don't know if it's related, but we don't know that it isn't, either." 

Sansa nods, hugging herself, and then Jon's approaching her, silhouetted by the golden light from the kitchen. Her heart is pounding as he wordlessly takes her bag from her. "You can hang your stuff up in the closet," he says, leading her to his bedroom. "You'll probably be here a few days." 

"Thank you. I'm sorry to impose," Sansa replies, but she senses it's too formal and only makes things feel stranger. They are all elbows and unsteadiness now, and Sansa doesn't know if it was the dirty talk, or the moment on his bike, or the awareness of his jail time between them that has pushed them over the ledge. Jon rolls his eyes at her formality as he opens his closet. Sansa tries not to peer curiously, but she can't help it: there's another pair of hiking boots, an army-green field jacket, a few pairs of jeans, a fishing rod... 

"You're not imposing, Sansa," he says irritably. He seems terse and distant, back to how he was the first night when she cornered him at Rayder's. Like he thinks she is a fool, like he doesn't have the time for her, like he disdains her as a little rich girl. Her manners tell her to back off and leave him be, but something else is telling her to poke the bear. 

"Well, you seem unhappy that I'm here," she points out, feeling her face flush. 

Jon pauses in the middle of pulling out a few hangers, and looks at her with amusement. 

"Unhappy," he repeats slowly. 

"Yes, you're all... snappish... now."

"Could it possibly be that I'm unhappy that some creep broke into your hotel room and stole your underwear?" he drawls. He steps back from the closet and then leans on the wall, crossing his arms and studying her. 

"Well, you could communicate that better," she says stiffly, avoiding his eyes. "The way you're acting now, it seems like you don't want me here. And you're the one who asked me to stay." 

"You've got a lot of complaints on my communication skills today," Jon remarks. "Almost like there's something specific you're looking for me to communicate." 

"No, that's not—it's not like that," Sansa snaps back. Now she feels cornered, and his bedroom is airless. "But that person who stole my underwear isn't here; it's just me. You don't need to punish me for what someone else did." 

She sees Jon's face fall, like she's slapped him, so she looks away, and her gaze lands on his narrow bed. She remembers, in a flash, him helping her out of her jumper, his shoulder brushing her knee as he helped to pull off her boots, and her skin prickles with awareness. "Anyway," she says hastily, looking away from the bed, "thanks for letting me use your closet. Not that it matters whether my clothes are wrinkled or not, but it does make me feel more human," she rambles, crouching down to unzip her bag. Unfortunately, the underwear she purchased is jammed in on top, and she risks a glance up at Jon as she shoves it into a side pocket of the bag. Jon is looking down at her, biting his lip, and she stands up again slowly, holding a blouse. 

"That's all?" he asks skeptically.

She cannot tell what that look on his face is. Her first thought is, _heat_ , but that's not an emotion. It's almost like anger, but that's not quite right either. There's something challenging, something baiting about it, too. Her mouth goes dry. "There's nothing else you want to talk about?" he prompts, raising his brows. 

The dirty talk, the jail time—it all clutters the air between them, and nothing is settling. His lip is red from being bitten and his eyes look almost like coal in the darkness. Sansa is abruptly aware that the daylight has died, that they are standing in the dark, that they are standing in the silence—and that they are standing very, very close together. 

"I—"

"Smells like Mrs. Seaworth was worried about Snow again!" Pyp's voice booms as the front door bursts open, and Sansa stumbles back. Jon lets out a short, furious breath and leaves the room, muttering something about a cigarette. 

* * *

They all sit around the fire in Davos' yard that night, once everyone has arrived. Sansa perches on a log, wrapped in her duffle coat, and Tormund drops down beside her. Away from the fire, Jon paces in the grass, wearing the army-green coat she saw in his closet earlier and smoking, the embers from his cigarette bright as a dragon's eye in the lavender night. 

"Greyjoy skipped town again, looks like," Tormund says, hitting his beer bottle on a rock to uncap it—and it doesn't shatter; the cap merely drops into the grass. He sees Sansa stare in surprise, and flashes her a wink. 

"If I were him, I would," Pyp says in a low, caustic voice, and Sansa realises they are all looking at Jon. But Jon's staring into the woods, smoking. The only giveaway that he is listening is that his back is stiff, shoulders drawn up. "Fucking meth head scum." 

"S'not like he'd've been useful," Tormund says with a shrug, clearly sensing the tension from Jon. "We've got no leads anyway, and more than half the time, he's off his head. Who knows what's fact and fiction with that fool." 

"Well, actually, we might have a lead," Sansa pipes up, because she knows she must, and because her discomfort is entirely worth anything that might help Arya. "Jon and I had something odd happen this afternoon that might be related." She swallows. "Or not. It might be random, a coincidence." 

They're all looking at her intently, their faces lit up by the fire. "The whole reason Arya went missing is that she was looking for my stalker," Sansa begins, forcing the words out. "One thing the stalker did was to break into my flat and steal my underwear. It was the thing that started Arya's search, because the police did nothing."

Her face flames, but none of the men look remotely amused by this fact, so she continues. "Earlier, Jon and I stopped at my hotel room to pick up my bag. I've been staying at the Dreadfort hotel, and Jon felt like Ramsay Bolton's behavior was too odd around me, so we decided I would spend the rest of my time here at Jon's." She fists her hands in the pockets of her duffle coat. "And, um, when we got there, it seems like someone did it again—broke into the room and stole my underwear." 

No one is speaking. "So, there's that," she finishes lamely, and Pyp shakes his head. 

"These fucking Stark women," he marvels. "Arya was like a fucking tiny Batman, and here's Sansa, 'oh, someone broke into my hotel room and stole my underwear right after we found my sister's crashed car, no big deal!' Jumping into rivers—"

"—Technically, it's a creek—"

"—Shut up, Tollett—" 

"—Just rolling into Rayder's like it's nothing, demanding to see Snow," Grenn adds with a laugh, and now they're all laughing. 

"She needs spurs and a hat," Tormund puts in, chuckling and shaking his head, and Pyp and Grenn are roaring with laughter now. 

" _I came to see Jon Snow. He's comin' with me,_ " Pyp says in a gravelly voice, squinting and holding out his hand like it's a gun. 

"This is my gun, Lemoncake," Grenn adds in a similar voice, and when Pyp yells that that's not a gun name, he mutters, "it was the girliest thing I could think of!"

When the laughter dies down, though, Jon steps in. 

"It's not just that," he says. "There was someone listening, too. Outside her door. Like they wanted to hear her reaction to the missing underwear." 

"That one's easy. It's that freak," Edd says evenly. "Maybe it's a coincidence that he did the same thing your other stalker did, Sansa, but he had access to your room. My money's on Bolton... not that there's much of it." 

"And he was looking at you like he owns you, at Mormont's," Tormund agrees, nodding to Sansa. "He's got a fixation on you."

"And he did _not_ like you walking off with Snow to look at your car," Pyp recalls darkly.

"I just don't get it," Grenn blurts out suddenly, and everyone looks at him. He's frowning as he stares into the fire. "Why steal her underwear? What's he even get out of that? If he wants to have sex with her so bad, I mean." 

"It's not about sex, is it?" Tormund points out. He takes a long swig of his beer. "He wants her to feel scared and unhappy. He's taunting her."

Something about his words makes Sansa breathless, and she loses the thread of the conversation for a moment as she stares into the fire. When she comes back to reality again, they're talking about different sections of woods that they want to comb, places where bodies are usually found. They talk about it with such grim pragmatism, like they've found other bodies in those places, like they are used to looking for missing women. As silly as their conversation was for a moment, these are harder men, with harder lives. 

And she feels Jon looking at her, and when she looks at him, he's doing that thing where he looks like he's reading her. 

(But she can read him too, or at least, she's pretty sure she can, and she thinks of what Davos said earlier— _he had thoughts of doing something more_ —and she tries to see Jon as clearly as he sees her. When she peers past the smoke and mystery, she sees a fishing rod and a dog he loves; she sees a man derailed by a life in which he knows where to look for bodies.)

It is late when they finally call it a night and the men disperse, agreeing to meet early in the morning.

Sansa shucks her clothes, which smell like a campfire, in Jon's bathroom. She unfortunately has brought only one set of pajamas, and they are a pink and white thermal set patterned with bunnies. She looks ridiculous and childish, even though she loves these pajamas, but there's nothing else for her to wear. 

When she leaves the bathroom, Jon is gone, his house silent—but Sansa sees smoke drifting over the porch through the window. 

It takes her a moment to make the decision, but Sansa finds herself pulling on her duffle coat and a thick pair of socks, and stepping out onto the porch. In the nighttime, Jon sits on his front steps, smoking, with Ghost curled up behind him. He looks back over his shoulder at the sound of the door swinging shut. 

"Mind if I join you?" Sansa asks, keeping her voice as casual as she can. Jon blows out a stream of smoke. 

"Go ahead." He shifts further to the side of the steps, and Sansa sits beside him, her arm brushing his. A beer bottle sits on the step below him, empty. 

They sit in silence, listening to the rustle and crackle of the wind through the barren treetops. Sansa tries not to shiver, because she has a feeling that this is her chance to get to Jon as he has gotten to her, and she won't ruin it with making him worry. "I know what you want," he begins in a low voice, and she holds her breath. "You want to ask about Greyjoy. So just ask. Since you love communicating so much." 

"I was hoping you'd learn from your mistakes earlier and just tell me yourself," she admits, bristling at his barbed tone. "Instead of being mean to me again." 

"I'm not being mean," Jon snaps, looking hassled. "How about I prod and poke you about the look _you_ had on your face when Giantsbane pointed out your stalker doesn't want sex from you? Let's see how sweet you are then. Some things are private."

"Fine. I'll explain that." She takes a shaking breath, and Jon's gaze snaps to her. "All these years I've felt I brought the stalker on myself, for... things... that I want. For things that I think about. For being bored with my perfectly nice boyfriends. I never could find the seam, or work it out in my head, until now. The seam between sex and violence, I mean. But Tormund explained it so perfectly. It was—it was a relief. I felt absolved, somehow." 

Jon blows out a long stream of smoke and Sansa fists her hands. "Your turn," she says, just to break the taut silence. Her voice shakes, because she has never admitted these things out loud, but there is a pleasure in knowing she has taken Jon aback; she is a force, an unknown variable. 

(She thinks of the pleasure of being in control, of having mastery, and then thinks, for the first time without guilt, of how much she would like Jon to rip that control from her; right now she hovers over him, she pins him down with her words; right now she is baiting him to flip her over and pin her in place instead. Maybe it's no coincidence that she enjoys having mastery over a man whom she knows can so easily take it from her; maybe it is no coincidence that the man who has forced her to find her agency is the man who could make her drop to her knees with a single searing look, if he so wanted.)

He glances at her, then looks down. He taps his cigarette. 

"There's plenty I've done wrong," he begins, his voice a warning. "But I was arrested for drug possession, and I've never done a drug in my life." 

He scoffs, shaking his head. "For _meth,_ too. Of all the fucking things... They found it in my house, they found it in my bike. But Greyjoy is the only meth dealer around here, and everyone knows it, even the cops, but they don't care about that. They were fucking delighted to find it on me." 

"You were framed," Sansa realises, and Jon nods, the movement tight and furious. 

"Someone wanted me out of town for a while," he says in a low voice, shaking his head. The drag he takes is short and hard. "And Greyjoy helped them. Pathetic little fuck."  
  
"But who?" 

Jon shakes his head. 

"There are a lot of people who'd be happy to see the end of me," he explains. He puts out his cigarette and lights a new one. "I make things difficult for people like Greyjoy."

"Ygritte said you're the reason people feel safe around here." 

"Dunno about that." He blows smoke out of his nose and Sansa thinks, again, of a dragon. "But they didn't just get rid of me for a little while—they fucked up my life. No one wants to hire a felon, and jail's expensive. I'm lucky that Judge Baratheon's a shrewd man, so the sentence could have been worse, but there was only so much he could do after they found the drugs in my house. They pinned me, for the rest of my life." He take another furious drag. "I knew it would bite me, in the end, but I didn't know how it'd happen. I'd already started pulling away from people, in case they went after people I loved, but—"

"—That's why you stopped talking to Arya," Sansa breathes. Something niggles at her, like she's forgetting something; again she has that strange sense of deja vu that she had earlier. "Because you love her."

Jon looks at her, a long, measuring look. He does that thing again, that challenging thing, where he tilts his head. 

"This must bother you a lot," he observes. "You asked me that last night, too." 

She feels that swooping feeling, like she's missed a step.

"Asked you what?" 

"Whether there was ever anything with me and your sister." He shifts, leaning against the railing, as he stares at her. "You think about it a lot." 

"Well, we never knew," Sansa says, glad he can't see her blush in the darkness. "I just knew she was running around with that rebel Jon Snow, and when I tried to ask her about you, she wouldn't explain." 

"There was never anything," Jon says. He seems amused. "I told you, she was like a little sister to me."

They fall silent again, but Jon is still staring at her. Sansa picks up a leaf from the step below and shreds it. 

"I'm sorry," she says, "for anything else weird I might've asked or said." 

Jon lets out a soft laugh, shaking his head. 

"I don't think you are," he murmurs. She is about to ask him what he means by that, but he is putting out his cigarette and picking up his beer bottle, getting to his feet. "You can have my bed," he says as he climbs the stairs. 

Inside, Sansa hangs her coat on a hook beside the hunting rifle as Jon drops the beer bottle in the bin. His dark eyes flick over her bunny pajamas and she sees him try to cover a smirk by rubbing his hand over his stubble, but he doesn't comment on them as he goes to the bedroom and pulls out blankets and pillows from the closet. "There's more in there if you get cold," Jon says, nodding to the closet. 

"Thank you. Seriously, I'm fine with the sofa; it's your bed, you should sleep in it," Sansa replies, crossing her arms over her chest as they stand, awkwardly, in his bedroom. 

"You know I'm not gonna agree to that, so why are you pressing it?" 

"Manners, I guess," Sansa says, and Jon laughs, surprising her. He looks away, then walks to the door—but he pauses and turns back to her, biting his lip. "Yes?" she forces out, trying to ignore that tightening, that anticipation, within her.

"The seam's wherever you want it to be," he says suddenly. "The line, I mean. You draw it, and you move it wherever you want. That's how it works. It's not complicated." 

Why is his house so damn small? It's nearly small as her flat; she feels pinned between him and his bed, though he is an arm's length from her. This is what she wanted, and there's a rush of heat in knowing that, but it's not enough. His eyes are so dark; she wants him to drop those blankets and close the gap, push her down on the bed, and she prays he cannot read such a desire on her face, because it's humiliating. "You just have to say," he continues more quietly, "what you want." 

"What if I don't know?" she asks quickly, her voice a whisper. Jon's lips twist. 

"Trust me, you know." He looks down. "The rest you figure out as you go." 

"I suppose you're an expert," she says before she can stop herself. 

"That bothers you too, apparently," he muses, shaking his head before looking at her again. 

"I asked you that?" Sansa cringes in horror. "Oh, god. I'm so sorry. It sounds like I really went all-in for all the personal stuff." 

"Manners, I guess," Jon repeats slyly. "And yeah, I'm more of an expert than you are—but that was some impressive dirty talk earlier, so maybe you're not as naive as you think." 

She doesn't know what to say. Jon still looks like he's trying not to smirk, and he turns away from her. "Nice bunnies, by the way," he says over his shoulder. "Night." 

"Good night," she sputters, watching him lay out the blankets and pillow on the sofa. 

* * *

The next morning they are awake at the crack of dawn, supplied with thermoses of hot coffee from Davos' wife, breaths misting in the air as the group convenes out front of Jon's house. Any lightheartedness from last night is gone; they are all focused. _Arya, Arya, Arya_ , Sansa's heart pounds. And, _Jeyne, Jeyne, Jeyne_. 

They're just arguing over where to start when they hear a low, guttural snarl. Heads turn.

"Your wolf's pissed at something, Snow," Edd observes. Ghost is growling at something in the woods at the edge of Jon's property, his posture low and dangerous. 

"Probably deer," Jon dismisses, but Tormund is shaking his head. 

"There's something there, Snow," he says—

—And that's when Sansa sees it, and the thermos slips from her hand and lands in the grass with a dull, violent thud. 


	8. the noose

No one speaks as Sansa numbly walks through the grass to stand at Ghost's side; she feels a hand at her back, and registers that Jon is fisting his hand in the back of her coat, trying to stop her from going any further, but she ignores it. 

The thing is at the very edge of the woods, lying in the seam between the trees and the tall, unruly grass, littered with brown fallen sycamore leaves and sticks and twigs. In the morning light the limbs gleam grotesquely, legs splayed unnaturally. The shape of a victim.

And hair—thick auburn hair, like spun copper in the morning light; hair that is remarkable, that could light up a whole neighborhood—is tangled with sticks and burrs, draped among the dry grass like a shining web.

Sansa recognises the underwear as one of her favorite pairs, a wide band of lace over the smoothest silk in the palest rose that matches her own skin, though now the colour looks somehow faded and grim in the daylight. She knows what that lace feels like against skin; she remembers folding the underwear and neatly packing it in her suitcase. She pictures unknown hands, grubby and malicious, the nails ringed with dirt, groping through her suitcase and finding the lace, sifting it out slowly, then bunching it in a sweaty palm, and her stomach lurches.

But then she recognises the watch, and she feels her stomach heave in earnest now. 

It's Arya's, and Sansa gave it to her for her birthday last year. She bought it in one of those hipster shops that peddle high-quality but utilitarian objects, like expensively-crafted bicycles based on vintage models and coloured avocado green or seafoam, and grid-paper notebooks covered in cognac leather. The watch has a no-nonsense brass face and a fine brown leather band. It is not remotely feminine, and hangs, bulky and overlarge, on the slender wrist. The face flips over to reveal a compass; that was why she chose it for Arya. 

Arya loved it; it was the one time Sansa really got a present _right_ for Arya, and Sansa can still remember that she knew she had got it right when Arya simply turned and flung her arms around Sansa mutely. Arya does not take the watch off, except to shower, and the leather band is prematurely worn and stained for this reason. 

And then at the throat glints a tiny flash of gold. Sansa does not have to look closely to know it will be a little golden bird, wings and beak painfully sharp. She knows how that charm feels, how it pokes her skin when it gets caught in her hair, how the points of the beak and wings feel against the pads of her fingertips.

The mannequin has no painted features, only a vaguely molded nose, mouth, and places where eyes should be. It lies face-up, the legs spread, the head twisted to look to the side, as though turned away in horror. A small bird lands on the peak of the sharp, jutting hip, then flutters off at Ghost's growl. Its small, hard, featureless breasts look more vulgar, somehow, than real breasts.

She can hear the crows somewhere nearby as she walks forward and kneels down before the body, and unbuckles the watch from the cold, hollow wrist with clumsy fingers. The air smells foul, like death and decay and something slippery and false. 

"This is Arya's," she says, rising to her feet and turning back to face the men. Their faces are grim as they take in the details: the underwear, the splayed copper hair, so similar to Sansa's; the watch that Sansa now holds. 

Jon is the first to speak. 

"Your necklace, too," he says, voice rough. "Wonder how long it's been here." 

She presses her lips together because the idea of some person—some man—creeping through the woods so near to where she slept, depositing this doll with Arya's watch and Sansa's underwear, is nauseating, and by the cold look on Jon's face, she is not the only one who feels sick with rage. She can see the muscle shifting in Jon's jaw as he grinds his teeth, staring down at the mannequin. 

"Couldn't've been long," Davos says at last, clearing his throat. "I was out here earlier this morning, cleaning up the bonfire, and it wasn't here. It's only been here an hour or two, at most." 

Jon is the first to take off into the woods, at a deadly clip, Ghost alongside him, and Tormund and Pyp follow. On numb legs, Sansa runs after them when she processes that he is running to see if the assailant is still nearby, with Grenn, Edd, and Davos behind her. The woods are in a blur around her and she realises that Arya's watch is still warm, the metal underside of the face holding onto another person's body heat. Is it warm already from her own skin? It seems impossible, because Sansa's hands are icy with numb shock.

No, the watch is warm from someone else: but from Arya's kidnapper, or from Arya herself? Which one is better, which one is worse?

"Wait," she calls after Jon and the others, and Jon reluctantly slows to a stop, the dry leaves thrashing and hissing around his boots as he spins around to face her. His shoulders rise and fall with quick, short movements as he catches his breath. "We have no idea which way they would have gone," she points out, breathless. Edd and Davos are peering at the ground around them, looking for some sign of tracks, but the woods stretch on for miles. "These woods are enormous. They could have gone in any direction." 

"He can't be far," Jon growls, looking around. "It's Bolton, I know it." 

"But we don't—"

"—That was your underwear and your necklace, Sansa, and both went missing at the hotel—"

"—We don't know that that's where I lost my necklace!" Sansa yells back, voice echoing through the trees. Everyone is staring at her. Jon looks taken aback at her volume and Sansa wonders if she has ever yelled that loud before. Her heart is pounding painfully against her breastbone and her eyes and nose burn in the cold air, and her vision pulses with her pounding heart. _Arya, Arya, Arya_. 

"Sansa's right, we've got to think this through," Tormund says, though he doesn't look pleased about it. "We need a plan and we need to be ready. We need guns and we need more men." 

"A plan? Easy; we go to the Dreadfort first," Jon says immediately. He is still breathing hard, his eyes wide. Sansa is getting a glimpse of the man someone went to great lengths to put in jail, so at odds with the surly, stubborn man who retreated when Davos tried to confront him about said jail time last night. 

(But not so at odds with the man who told her he'd fuck her for a week. Not _nearly_ enough.)

"But—" Sansa begins, but halts at the look on Jon's face. When she's got her nerve back again, she continues. "Whoever put that here—whether it was Ramsay or not—wants us to react. Don't you see?"

"They'll get a reaction, alright," Jon seethes darkly. 

"But it's just like my stalker, Jon," Sansa counters. "They wanted me to be scared and unhappy. They left little signs that were intended to rattle me. Don't you think—"

"—I'm not scared, and I'm not rattled—"

"—You're right again," Davos steps in swiftly, nodding to Sansa, "but Snow's right, too, Sansa. Whoever did this is nearby, and clues point to Bolton. They did do this to get a reaction, but they're also vulnerable now."

"We can head him off at the Dreadfort hotel," Jon says more calmly now, eyes never leaving Sansa's face. "One group combs the woods, the other group goes to the Dreadfort."

"I'll go to Rayder's and tell Ygritte to call around," Edd volunteers. "It's one of her and Val's friends that was taken; she'll want in." The men are already walking back toward Jon's house, and Sansa has no choice but to follow, with Ghost padding alongside her. Jon's strides are long and swift, and he leads the group, his posture tight with fury. Sansa feels, suddenly, the distance between them as yawning and deep as a chasm. After the closeness and honesty of last night, it is shattering and lonely, but she does not know which of them is the one that is pulling away. 

(Is it her? Is she recoiling from him at the sight of his darker side? Or is she recoiling from how that sight makes her feel? She thought she had accepted this part of her, but now she's not so sure. This is a step too far in a direction she never intended to walk. She saw his eyes darken like that and her first, blinding instinct was _want._ )

Back at Jon's house, Sansa catches up to Jon as he unlocks his door with violent, harsh movements; behind them, bikes and cars roar to life as the other men prepare to set off, either for their own guns or to find more people to help, with the agreement to reconvene at Rayder's next. Jon and Sansa are alone, with Ghost beside them on Jon's porch. The door hits the decaying wooden siding as Jon throws it open—

—But Jon pauses in the doorway, and Sansa thinks of a wolf, hackles raised, as Ghost begins snarling and growling. 

Is there something—someone—in Jon's house?

"Sansa, don't come in," Jon says flatly. "Stay right there. Ghost, stay." 

Ghost crouches in front of Sansa, snarling, as Jon steps inside his house, and that's when Sansa sees it. 

"Your window," she calls after him, "it's broken." Glass litters the floor of the porch, and mud scuffs the siding.

But Jon is staring at the wall by the door, and after a moment, Sansa sees him shake his head through the screen. 

"Broke in and took my rifle," he says disgustedly. "Hold on, let me get my other gun." He disappears into the bedroom, and Sansa waits outside with Ghost. The idea of someone breaking into Jon's house in the moments they were all running through the woods and stealing from him gives her the same oil-slick sick feeling that her stalker gave her, that the sight of the mannequin gave her. She wraps her arms around herself and tries to shiver away from that sick feeling.

At last, the door bangs open again. Jon is tucking a smaller gun into the waistband of his jeans at his back, looking disgusted. "I think that's all he took," he says. "Looks like he just took the hunting rifle and ran."

Now Ramsay—if it is Ramsay—has a hunting rifle. Jon is pushing at his hair, looking furious. And then, as though splashed with cold water, he sags slightly and looks at Sansa. He holds her gaze, like he can read her thoughts, and she swallows.

"I'm coming with you," she informs him, and he nods, more to himself, and looks away. 

"Stark women," he mutters. "Don't worry, I only considered telling you to stay put. Wouldn't've actually tried it." 

(Just two weeks ago, she was sitting in her favorite cafe with a slice of lemoncake and a patterned china mug of chai, typing away on her young adult series about a good witch whose family owns a pie shop to distract herself, and trying not to obsessively ring the detective assigned to Arya's case.)

(Now she is mud-spattered and wild, furious with Jon but, at the same time, darkly desperate to see that look in his eyes again, to have him fist his hand in her hair and to growl in her ear.) 

(Now she is about to hunt down her sister's captor, alongside a man who owns guns.)

(Who is Sansa Stark anymore?)

"Good," she bites out, the word alien in her mouth. She is not a pushy woman, she is not a woman who makes threats or demands. Isn't she? Jon looks at her again, and she sees his eyes narrow and brow furrow slightly, like he's realised something. "What?" she presses, and Jon shakes his head.

"It can wait," he says cryptically. "It's got to. Come on." 

Jon leaves Ghost with Mrs. Seaworth to keep her safe, and then they're riding through the trees again, towards Winter Town. Arya's bulky watch forms a lump in Sansa's pocket, digging into her side, and Sansa holds onto Jon tighter, scrunching her eyes shut and trying not to focus on whether Arya is alive or not. She has to be alive, she has to be safe. 

At Rayder's, a small group of men and women are waiting by the empty bar. The building looks more forlorn than dangerous in the daylight. Ygritte is there, in boots and a leather jacket and hoodie, standing with two other women. One of them is a striking beauty, with cool blonde hair and cool blue eyes, who nods toward Jon when they enter, and Sansa ignores a spike of curiosity.

"Now that we're all up to speed," Davos is saying, as Jon and Sansa slip into the little straggly ring, "we need a plan. We've got men combing the woods round Snow's house, but we need a plan for going to the hotel." 

"There's a trail with a parking lot just west of the hotel," Jon begins, stepping further into the ring. All eyes are on him. "If we go from there on foot we can surround the hotel, in case he tries to run. And it's far enough that if he calls the police, there's time to scatter and get away." 

"And if we find him?" the blonde asks, and Sansa sees she is loading bullets into a rifle of her own with an expert confidence. 

"We need him _alive_ so he can tell us where the women are," Jon says slowly and clearly, and the blonde looks disappointed. "And on the off-chance that he isn't responsible, he can't be wounded too bad, either." 

"He's got dogs," Sansa puts in, and then all eyes are on her.

"How many?" Ygritte demands. 

"I don't know. More than one, but I only saw one. They're vicious, though, and big." Sansa motions with her hands, recalling that horrible black, snarling hound. 

After identifying on the map where they will be meeting, the group scatters again. Sansa follows Jon to his motorbike, trying to quell the horrible feeling that she has, the sense that she is useless. She doesn't even know how to use a gun, and she's not sure she could do it even if she learned. After feeling the high of mastery, of agency, powerlessness is an intolerable, claustrophobic feeling. 

(And yet she wants Jon to make her feel powerless. Last night it all seemed so simple, so obvious, but in daylight it is tangled again, and she is not sure she will ever be able to settle comfortably with this dichotomy.)

"You've no idea how much I want to make you stay here," Jon mutters bitterly as they go to his bike. "You've got to promise me you won't do anything impulsive."

"Would you promise me that?" Sansa points out. Jon holds his helmet for a moment and considers her. 

"No, but that's different."

"How? How is it different?" Rage blooms within her. 

"You're more to lose," he says, and he puts his helmet on as she tries to recover from such a simple, loaded statement. "You have to promise me you won't go off alone. If we get separated, find someone else and stick with them. You don't have a gun and there's no time to teach you how to use one." 

"It won't come to that," Sansa insists. 

She hesitates before putting her own helmet on. There's something wrong, but she can't work out quite how to put it into words. Something makes the hairs raise along her skin, like they're walking into a trap, but as the bikes and cars roar past them, heading to the Dreadfort hotel, she wonders how this could be anything but a trap for Ramsay Bolton. Ten people with guns coming after him—it certainly won't come to them getting separated. Won't it? She can't logically see how it could. 

And yet. Her instincts say otherwise, and she is beginning to learn to listen to them—but she doesn't know how to make anyone else listen to them. 

The ride through the woods, to that parking lot, goes too fast. Before Sansa knows it, they're all there gathered together, in a strange, eerie silence, in the parking lot, surrounded by ancient trees that look down and in on their group. They decide to split into two groups: Jon and a few others will go to the front of the hotel and smoke Ramsay out; and then somehow Sansa finds herself lumped into the other group: the one that will surround the hotel and wait. 

"You've got a mobile phone and you can't use a weapon," the blonde, Val, points out. "If you want to be useful to us, you can call the others if there's trouble. You're no use to us otherwise." 

She does want to be useful, but this feels a bit like being given a useless task to occupy her, to get her out of the way. Sansa meets Jon's eyes and he tilts his head in the look she is getting to know as a challenge, his eyes narrowing. The group fractures and begins walking, but Jon and Sansa linger behind, with Jon calling after them that he'll catch up. 

"You're thinking," he observes warily.

"I hate feeling useless. She's my sister," Sansa explains. "And I'm just dead weight."

"You're not," Jon says immediately. He's peering at her, still, though. He doesn't look satisfied with her words. "You're not useless at all. But you have to promise me you'll stick with Val."

"I'm not thinking anything," Sansa protests, not sure if she is even lying or not. She has a sense of something, a feeling, that fills her with urgency, but she doesn't know what it is. "I just am mad at myself. That's all." 

"Stark women," Jon mutters again, and he's reaching into his pocket. He grabs her hand and curls her fingers over something. "Just take this, and use your head, please." 

"I'm just the lookout," Sansa reminds him as she opens her hand and looks down. His pocketknife is in her palm, the black plastic still warm from being inside his pocket, and she curls her fingers over it again. 

"You'd fucking better be," he mutters. "I swear to god you'd better not do anything that means you've got to use this, alright? Please just stick with Val, you're safest with her. As long as you're with her, no one's getting close enough for you to need this, but—just in case—" 

He takes the pocket knife and shows her how to open it. The little blade flicks out, and Sansa closes it, then tries it herself. "It's one man against ten," Jon begins, as Sansa closes the knife and pockets it, "so it shouldn't come to this." 

He almost sounds like he's talking to himself, like he's praying. 

* * *

Sansa follows Val, Pyp, and Grenn through the grass, to the back of the hotel's property. She lets her strides lag behind them. Pyp and Grenn are absorbed in flirting competitively with Val, anyway, and Val seems mostly absorbed in her gun. No one notices Sansa; she becomes background scenery, palming Jon's pocketknife with one hand and Arya's watch with the other. 

She does not know exactly what she will do, or how exactly she will do it, but she decides to trust her gut. She never exactly promised Jon anything, and besides, she doesn't see how this could lead to anything more than a little brief confusion. The Dreadfort looms up over them, a massive collection of hidden gothic nooks and crannies, and with a shiver she wonders if Arya was hidden somewhere in here the whole time. 

"You could be a model," Grenn is saying as they crest the last hill. There's a clutch of trees and hedgerow nearby, leading to an overgrown path sheltered by broken trellis. The path leads toward the side of the hotel, likely toward an enclosed garden.

This is her chance. Sansa's mouth goes dry. 

"A supermodel," Pyp counters, gazing at Val, who seems supremely indifferent to everyone and everything around her. "Has anyone ever told you?" 

"Only stupid, lonely boys," Val drawls absently, still examining her gun as she walks with long, elegant, gazelle-like strides. Grenn has the grace to look abashed, but Pyp is determined. 

"Well now you're being told by a very cool man," he informs her. 

"I'm a very cool man too," Grenn puts in, and this is Sansa's chance—she slips away on silent feet and ducks into the hedgerow, heart pounding, and crouches there, waiting for them to walk further away. None of them seem to notice, and when they've made a few more meter's progress, she ducks down the pathway, stones and weeds crunching beneath her boots. 

"Wait—shit—Sansa! Where'd she go?" she hears Pyp yell, but she's already crashing through more hedgerow, and it is too late. 

Her heart is pounding as she pushes out the other side, and lands on broken slabs of slate in an overgrown courtyard with a broken fountain, panting. She swings her gaze, not sure of what she's looking for, and then sees it—a grate blocking a window set into the ground. It looks newer, and the framing of the stones makes it clear it was added on later. It's as good a hiding spot as any. At least she can do this; at least she can search for Arya and Jeyne and the others.

Sansa kneels before the grate and squints, trying to peer into the dusty, grubby window, but it's too dark to see. She pulls on the grate and hears an odd scratching sound, but assumes it's a squirrel and pulls harder. 

And then there's a low, eerie rumbling. Flexing her fingers in pain from pulling on the grate, Sansa looks over her shoulder—

—And looks across the courtyard into the deadened eyes and frothing jaw of an enormous, black, glossy hound.


	9. howl

Sansa freezes and stares at the hound. The hound stares back, muzzle rippling and lips curling as slaver drips from yellowed teeth. 

There is a loose chunk of slate, broken off of a slab near the fountain. It's all she's got. With a shaking hand, Sansa picks up the slate and flings it past the dog. The dog's head whips in the direction of the rock—and Sansa breaks into a sprint. 

She fights her way through thick bushes and stumbles out the other side, into open field. She's facing the woods and that's the nearest shelter she's got, so she runs as fast as her legs can carry her. There's no time to look back, no time to plan—only time to act. She doesn't know what she'll do next, she doesn't know how close or far the dog is behind her; she just knows the weight of Jon's knife in her pocket and the burning in her lungs. 

She reaches the woods. They're darker here, with gnarled trees overhead and thorny bramble, and the thorns snag on her boots and jeans and the hem of her coat, making awful ripping sounds, and it seems like an age that she fights through the thorns and vines. When she emerges on the other side of the bramble patch, she stumbles over a root and is flung to the ground, a hard smack that leaves her palms raw and the wind knocked out of her. 

But when she flips over, kicking backwards through pine needles and fallen leaves and gasping in horror, there is no dog advancing on her. She is safe. She imagines the dog at the edge of the bramble, stalking back and forth as he looks for a way in. It seems impossible that she has gotten to safety, and for a moment she is dizzy with relief and confusion. 

The woods are silent and dark, and now that she looks around, she is uncertain of where she came in. She can almost identify a trail through the bramble, but she doesn't want to go back that way. Sansa takes out Arya's watch, and flips over the face to reveal the compass. When she faces the direction of her trail of bramble, it points west. 

Time to start walking. 

She walks for a while, adjusting her path to the compass. Her knees and palms still sting and throb from her fall, and her lungs still burn too much to run again, and besides, it's so dark here that she knows she'll just fall again.

The bramble eventually clears and the trees grow taller and thicker, with large, gnarled roots rippling along the ground, her boots catching on them and making her stumble every now and then. She wonders how the others are; she wonders how angry Jon will be when he learns she went off on her own. The stupidity of her decision astounds her now, as she thinks of what might have happened if she hadn't outrun the dog. It was such a foolish, impulsive decision—the most foolish, impulsive thing she has ever done. 

She comes across a winding, narrow road, and is just about to stumble onto it, relieved to have easier ground to traverse, when a sound makes her pause and hide in the shadow of a pine. 

A glossy black car with dark windows is rounding the bend, driving so slowly that it seems they are looking for something, but the windows are too dark for her to see inside. Sansa feels an odd twist in her gut, and she watches the car drive slowly past. There is something familiar about the car, though she has never seen it before.

It's probably nothing. But something makes her feet move; something urges her to follow that car. Maybe this is even more foolish than wandering off on her own to look for her sister... but she is the protagonist now, and she cannot go back to simply being bait, to simply being a passenger in her own life. She wants to _be_ something, she wants to _do_ something. She wants to prove she is more than a pretty victim.

She cuts through the woods, keeping the road in view. It's the road to that parking lot, she realises, and she knows it gets more ragged as it approaches the lot—it will definitely slow down a fine car like that, and give her time to catch up. Up ahead she hears a door slam, but she's still too far to see who leaves the car; through the trees she can just barely make out the figure, but no details, and she watches them begin walking. She hears shoes crunch on the gravel, hears the beep of the lock, but when she at last spills out into the lot, the driver is gone. 

What is she doing? It's probably just another hiker. And yet—and yet—

She just needs to see, she decides. It's probably nothing—but what if it's not? What if her instincts are right?

The car is locked, and even up close the windows are too dark to see inside. The car is expensive; Sansa is not an expert on cars but even she can tell that this is a fine car. It seems utterly out of place in this lot, too glossy and too sleek and too sharp. And the footprints in the gravel do not lead toward the little beaten trail, like a hiker's would. They go directly into the woods, due east. Like a dog on the hunt.

Sansa follows them. Though she doesn't need Arya's compass right now, she clutches it in a clammy palm, anyway, for courage. 

Something about the woods here makes her mind itch with familiarity, but it isn't until she hears the roar of rushing water that she realises where she is: the creek, where Arya's car was crashed. And, distantly, she hears yelling, and her heart seizes, but she creeps closer anyway, ducking from tree to tree, shadow to shadow. That broken wrought-iron bridge rises up before her, tangled and inky, its railings curled like frayed guitar strings, and just beyond it—

—A gunshot goes off. 

"That wasn't wise of me, was it? That was your last bullet, Jon Snow," a cold, musical voice is just barely audible over the rushing water. "Too bad. I'm sorry to have to take your gun, but I've heard you're a fine shot, you see, and it's not in my plans to get shot today." 

Sansa freezes. 

On the opposite bank, Jon is pinned by Ramsay, blood streaking down his face. Behind Ramsay, three black hounds wait, poised for killing. There is a trail of blood smeared along the ground near Jon's leg—one of the dogs must have gotten him and taken him down. The useless gun lies in the grass beside the two men. 

Jon is wounded; Jon is weaponless. 

She panics. What can she do? She has no weapon, either, save for the pocketknife, and she is across the creek. Even if she could cross the rushing water, she might not even be able to scrabble up the opposite bank, as it's high and slippery, a steep muddy drop. And then, even if she did manage to make it up the bank, by then, Ramsay or one of his dogs would be able to get her. 

What can she do?

She watches, in horror, as Jon struggles viciously against Ramsay, and then lets out a furious, strangled oath of agony as Ramsay kneels on his leg, where the blood is seeping through his jeans. "He'll be here, soon, Jon Snow, and then you'll be sorry, oh yes," Ramsay says gleefully, kneeling harder. "You've made some interesting enemies, haven't you? Nothing but enemies. If only you'd stayed out of it." 

What can she do, what can she do? She keeps thinking of the word, _bait_ , and how Jon looked when he said it, and before she has even consciously made the choice—it is just like when she flung herself into the creek to look into Arya's car—she is exploding forth from the trees, to the edge of the creek. 

"Ramsay, let him go!" she calls. 

Both men freeze and look in her direction. Wondrous joy lights up Ramsay's face, and it is the most nauseating sight she has ever seen. She does not know how she could have ever thought he had become handsome. 

Conversely, Jon's eyes go wide in blind panic, and she is pretty sure she reads, _fucking Stark women_ , on his lips. 

"Sansa Stark," Ramsay calls across the creek in savage delight, but he doesn't let Jon go. "What a coincidence, seeing you here." 

Sansa walks to the edge of the bank. Down the dangerous sloping bank, Arya's car still lies in wait, the water frothing around it. Her heart is pounding, and she grips the watch as though the harder she grips it the more of Arya's strength she can draw from it. "He'll be ever so pleased to see you, Sansa Stark," Ramsay continues, and Sansa thinks of the glossy black car. "He said if I took down Snow I could have the girls for my dogs, and if I brought you to him, he might even share you." 

Jon takes Ramsay's momentary distraction to knee Ramsay hard in the gut, knocking the wind out of him, but before Sansa can see what happens, there is a rush of leaves crunching behind her, and Sansa turns to see a man emerging from the woods with slow, ponderous strides. 

He is dressed immaculately, in a fine, custom suit and an expensive black trench coat. A mockingbird pin gleams on his tie, and though Sansa is not close enough, she can already smell the mint and cologne on him—the same cologne that Ramsay was wearing. She knows that cologne but she didn't recognise it then, when she smelled it on Ramsay. 

The man smiles, revealing bright white teeth.

"Sansa," Petyr Baelish says softly. He approaches her. "Look at you, you're a mess." 

She takes a step back, and the heel of her boot strikes the wrought iron bridge. In her mind's eye, Sansa sees the flash of gold that glinted at the mannequin's throat, feels the points of her bird necklace digging into her skin though it is still on the mannequin. She can feel cool black silk through her fingers and the amused stares of so many police officers. She sees years and years of Petyr Baelish at her house, at family gatherings, holding a drink that he never sips and letting his cool gaze rest on her neck, her hair, her mouth, her breasts, from the time she was only thirteen or fourteen. Years of him catching her alone to whisper how pretty she's become, years of expensive gifts that make her father frown, never quite inappropriate enough to engender more than an unvoiced sense of unease. 

Her face is burning as Petyr lazily approaches. 

"Where's my sister, Petyr?" Sansa asks. Petyr smiles, shaking his head. 

"Nowhere you need to worry about, sweetling." 

They face each other. Petyr takes another step forward, then another, cornering Sansa on the broken bridge. The roaring of the falls is loud in her ears, and she can hear Jon and Ramsay struggling; she can hear the dogs snarling. She grips the rough railing to steady herself, but the bridge trembles under her weight. "If you just come with me," he begins, sounding calm and reasonable, "we can sort all of this nonsense out." 

_I could have the girls for my dogs,_ Ramsay had said. Sansa swallows as she stares at Petyr. 

"Come with you," she repeats, stalling for time. She is not so foolish to reach into her pocket now, while Petyr is looking, but she is aware of the knife in her pocket. Jon's knife. For some reason she cannot stop thinking of the blood soaking the ground around Jon's leg, cannot stop hearing the stifled pain in his voice. Petyr nods, and is about to speak—

—When there is a crashing sound coming from the woods, and Theon emerges, holding a long hunting rifle—Jon's rifle?—blood streaking from his forehead. His eyes are wild and he is gasping for breath. He looks for a long, miserable moment at Sansa: his dark eyes are filled with regret, with apology, and she wonders if he is in on it too, if he is about to kill her.

It all happens too quickly: there is a flat CRACK sound; Theon is thrown backwards; behind her there is a garbled, choked cry of pain—was it Ramsay's pain?—then there is the echo of a pistol and Theon drops to the ground, crumpling in a heap, letting out a low whine, and Petyr is stowing a fine pistol in the inner pocket of his coat. Sansa only has time to suck in a breath of horror before Petyr is turning back to her, quite unmoved. 

"I knew Greyjoy would prove to be trouble," he says calmly, looking almost amused. "Ever since he told me he saw you and recognised your necklace, he's been nothing but difficulty after difficulty. One would think he'd be grateful, after all that Bolton and I did to help him dodge prison." 

Sansa belatedly realises that tears are streaming down her cheeks, and Petyr takes this sight in like it's beautiful to him, eyes roving over her wet cheeks. Sansa registers that someone is calling her name, telling her something, but she cannot hear over the roaring in her ears. She has never been more scared; she thinks she might vomit, so she clamps her lips shut as she stares at Petyr. 

_Like bait,_ she hears distantly, from another world, a quieter world, a softer world. _Like bait_ , Jon's pretty lips say. 

She lets herself cry harder, lets herself begin shaking, as she sees the look of hunger flash in Petyr's eyes. She covers her eyes, like bait, and lets out a choked sob. She can hear Petyr's shoes clicking as he alights the wrought iron bridge. "Shh, Sansa, sweetling," he breathes, "there's no need to cry. Come with me, and I'll make it all better."

She takes a step backward, boots finding purchase on the iron. The surface is slippery from the spray of the creek, and her heart is in her throat. She knows what she has to do, but the trick is to not let Petyr see it. She weeps harder. 

"They were from you," she weeps, raising her face from her wet palms. Petyr stands before her, and reaches out a hand. His thumb caresses her cheek. "The gifts were from you."

"You're even lovelier than your mother, you know," he murmurs. "You liked my gifts, sweetling, I know you did. You wore your necklace all the time." 

The fear abruptly recedes, and in its place is fury. She pictures gloved hands pawing through her drawers in her flat, holding a tape measure to her dresses to determine her measurements for that black silk dress, leaving that expensive comb... "I tried to keep away from you," he says now, looking feverish. "Truly, I tried. I promised myself I would only send you gifts, only admire you from afar. I found my satisfaction in other girls, girls whom no one would miss." 

Sansa thinks of Jeyne and swallows her rage. "But then your sister caught on to me. She recognised the necklace I had given to the other girls," he recalls now, "and noticed other...patterns. I admit I was trying to recreate you in other girls, and it proved to be unwise. The foolish girl confronted me. I might have just killed her then myself, but you never know when a person will be of use, and besides, Ramsay took an interest in her once he realised she was close with Jon Snow." 

He has a gun, and he's fast, too. Sansa tries to pay attention to his words, but her blood is pounding like a war drum in her ears. She needs to get the gun out of his hands; she needs to incapacitate him long enough to get to safety and call for help. The knife is in her pocket but it isn't open and Petyr's gaze is too watchful right now for her to risk reaching into her pocket. 

So she lifts her eyes to his, and lets more tears fall, lets her shoulders shake. He sets his hands on her shoulders and her skin crawls. All of these years, the discomfort she has felt around him—the discomfort she has felt so guilty for—was grounded in something. All these years, the faint queasy feeling was not some shallow, meaningless reaction, but instead a sense of who he really was. All these years, and her instincts were right.

And she was too busy trying to be polite. 

"I was so afraid," she whispers, and tries not to recoil as Petyr's thumb brushes away another tear. The water rushes below, and Sansa slips one hand into her pocket, because Petyr's gaze is riveted. He wants her afraid, he wants her unhappy. "But I wore that necklace any time I felt scared, and thought of you." 

His pupils dilate. This is what he wants to hear: that he utterly controls her emotions, that he alone can make her terrified and then soothe that terror. Sansa feels the knife swipe open beneath her thumb. "Thinking of you made me feel so safe. I want to wear that black dress for you." 

"I want you to—" he rasps.

Sansa plunges the knife into his leg. 

Later she will remember this series of moments as though they are slides flashing on a projector: the realisation that the blade is so short that it does not go very far through Petyr's thick coat and suit; the garbled cry of rage and pain that he lets out; the spray of the falls; the world swinging as Petyr begins to fall from the broken bridge; the hand in her coat that pulls her downward; the slap of water that feels hard as cement; then green darkness. 

The taste of iron fills her mouth for one quiet moment and there's a searing pain in her leg—then chaos. Something strong is pulling her up, and then she is among the mud and rocks of the bank beside Arya's car, choking and coughing up water that is pink with blood; a dark figure is pulling Petyr from the water, downstream, and dogs are barking and howling, and there's shouting, and Sansa realises more people have arrived but she is so cold and shaking so violently that she cannot think long on it. She hears Petyr let out a strangled howl of agony, and sees Jon dragging him to the bank. She sees Jon drop Petyr back onto the bank where he crumples in anguish. 

Then, Jon looks at her, breathless and soaked from jumping into the water, watery blood running down the side of his face, and he kicks Petyr hard, before approaching Sansa. He drops down before her and pulls her against him, and she dizzily presses her face to his wet shirt. 

"Never fucking do that again," he says in her ear, and she can only laugh dazedly against him, too dizzy and too relieved to ask, _do what?_ as his arms tighten around her until it is just short of painful, his chin resting on her head. 

—And then she hears her sister's voice.

Sansa looks up and, on the edge of the bank, Val and Ygritte are leaning over to look down at her, with Arya in tow. Arya, Arya, Arya. She is alive, she is alive, she is alive. Her hair is wild and she's got a black eye, and she looks a little thinner and a little greyer, but she is alive and she's yelling Sansa's name, breaking free from Val's grip to struggle down the bank to Sansa and Jon. 

* * *

Everything is a blur. There are sirens and ambulances; Theon, still breathing but looking ashen and helpless, is loaded onto a stretcher; there are rescue blankets and tight embraces; there is a call to her family; there is Jeyne, and other girls Sansa does not know, at the hospital. And Jon and his friends quietly recede as the police begin to arrive at the hospital in Winter Town, unable to take credit for what they did, unable to wait in the hospital. 

Sansa does not leave Arya's side until their family arrives: Catelyn is wild with relief and grief, Ned is coldly furious and ready to rain hell down upon Petyr, Robb's blue eyes are wet with shock and something like grief as he learns of Theon's role; Bran is limp and shaken and can't stop hugging Arya, and Rickon is hyperactive and bounces around the hospital room, talking wildly about nothing and everything. 

At last, it is around midnight. Ned and Catelyn have fallen asleep in chairs in Arya's room; Robb has taken Bran and Rickon back home for the night. Sansa and Arya lay on Arya's bed together in the quiet darkness, discussing all that has happened: how Arya recognised the sorts of gifts that one of the girls had been receiving; how she had a hunch about Petyr; how she went to confront him, only to be snatched by Ramsay; how she was kept in the basement of the Dreadfort hotel with the other girls, the dogs keeping watch all the while. How Ramsay knelt down in front of her and told her that he had crashed her car in the creek to lead Sansa to think she was dead; how Ramsay knelt down in front of her the next day and dropped a pair of Sansa's underwear in front of her. 

In turn, Sansa tells her everything: how she arrived at the Dreadfort hotel; how she came to work with Jon and his friends to search for her; the confrontation on the broken bridge. When she tells her about plunging the knife into Petyr's leg, Arya flings an arm around Sansa and squeezed her tightly. 

"I have your watch," Sansa says at last, lifting her head from the pillow to look at Arya. Her sister's face is bruised, but her eyes are lively as ever as she rolls them. 

"Oh, good," she mutters. "Been super worried about that. Priority number one." 

They laugh as Sansa gets up and fishes it out of her still-damp coat, which has been hung on the wall. She curls up again next to Arya and hands it to her, and Arya takes it. 

"Ramsay told Theon to put it on the mannequin," Arya recalls, looking at it and flipping the compass up and down. "And Theon just did it, so obediently. I was so mad. I was screaming at him until my voice gave out." Arya's voice is indeed hoarse, and she laughs as she puts the watch on again. "God. You should have heard me. Should've known he was just putting up a front." 

"I can imagine," Sansa admits. She looks at her sister. Arya looks wan and weary, though she will never admit it. "You've been through hell," she adds. 

"I won't lie, it wasn't great," Arya says hoarsely. "Worth it, but not great." 

They lay together in quiet again, and Sansa can feel Arya's head growing heavier on her shoulder. "You want to go talk to Jon, don't you?" Arya's voice is growing thick with sleep, and, potentially, with painkillers. 

The clock strikes midnight. 

"Yes," Sansa admits. "I do." 

She kisses the top of Arya's head as she shifts off the bed, and Arya laughs sleepily. 

"Totally called that one," she yawns. "You were always into him." 

Sansa tries not to laugh as she pulls the woven hospital blanket over Arya. 

"Yes, I think I was," she says. 

"He n-never would talk about you," Arya stumbles mid-yawn. "Completely shut down any time I mentioned you." She turns on her side. "He thinks he's got such a great poker face, cause he wins against those morons at Rayder's, but I always kicked his arse in poker." 

* * *

There isn't much to be done for her appearance. Sansa quickly showers in the shower in Arya's room and runs a very cheap plastic comb through her hair, but the clothes that Mum and Dad brought are old and ill-fitting and she has none of her makeup or usual products with her. It doesn't matter; there's no time to worry because it is getting later and later, and she feels an increasing sense of urgency. She needs to see Jon—but why? Can't it wait until tomorrow, or the next day? 

The ward manager is surprisingly helpful in calling her a cab, but the cabbie looks at her in shock when Sansa says that she wants to go to Rayder's. It is nearly closing time, after all—not that Rayder's actually abides by such laws.

The high street is quiet, but when they reach Rayder's, music blares more loudly than ever. Sansa supposes they are celebrating the safety of their missing girls, and as she pays the cabbie and gets out, she stands before the rowdy pub in apprehension. 

What, exactly, is she planning on doing? Why does she need to talk to Jon so badly tonight? 

She doesn't really know, she decides as she opens the door to the pub, and her ears are assaulted by music. The air is thicker than ever with smoke, and as her throat is still raw from choking on creekwater, the smoke irritates it more, and she coughs. She's just acting on instinct, and her instincts are telling her to find Jon now, tonight, before he can slip away from her. 

"There's my fierce girl!" Ygritte yells as Sansa walks past the bar, and the men standing around let out celebratory whoops. The cool blonde, Val, is there, and she nods to Sansa. 

"You're an idiot," she informs her. "But I respect it." 

"Thanks," Sansa stammers in surprise, as Val raises her drink in a sort of salute before drinking.

"Snow's upstairs, like usual," Ygritte calls over the music and the celebrations, and Sansa blushes at the shrewd gleam in Ygritte's eye. 

As she weaves through the throngs of men, she does not feel like bait. She passes Tormund, who is crouched on the stairs entertaining a group of his own, and he beams at her as she passes. There is a knot of apprehension—or anticipation?—forming as she reaches the top stair. Her knees feel weak, her head feels light, and her heart pounds out, _Jon, Jon, Jon_. 

And that's when she sees him: a lean back, clad in black, tangled dark hair pulled into a low bun. And everyone else at the table—Pyp, Grenn, Edd, Davos, and others she doesn't know yet—is looking at her, and she is rooted to the spot as that head turns slowly: flinty eyes and pretty lips, soft lashes and prickly stubble. Eyes dark as coal as he studies her, taking her in. She swallows. 

"I need to talk to you," she says, and then adds, "Jon." 


	10. spells

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look I hate writing the whole contraceptive bit because it's another annoying logistic to work into it so just assume they are being responsible adults! 
> 
> thank you all for the wonderful comments and support for this fic! i am SPENT from daily updates but it was worth it and i learned a LOT in writing this fic. hope you enjoy!!

She thinks he'll drop his hand of cards at once, because so much has passed between them, but he doesn't. For a moment he just studies her—that gaze that she knows means he's reading her—and at last he blows a long line of smoke.

"You got your sister back," he points out. Sansa is aware of everyone else's eyes on her, and she wishes her face didn't flush so easily and so visibly, because this is already embarrassing enough. _Why_ is he being so cool, so distant, all of a sudden?

"I still want to talk to you," she insists, trying to ignore everyone else and focus on Jon. There's a shiny bandaid on his brow, where he was hit earlier, and from here his eyes look almost black. She sees those eyes take in her ill-fitting clothes, her still-damp hair. "Please," she adds, and he takes a sharp drag on his cigarette and drops his hand of cards.

"I'm out," he says simply to the rest of the table. Pyp and Edd look like they are both about to explode with gossip and Grenn looks confused; Davos looks mildly indulgent and amused. But then Jon is gripping her upper arm and guiding her out onto that same fire escape that they spoke on her first night here, and her pounding heart eclipses any thought.

The door swings shut behind them, swallowing the noise and chaos of Rayder's, and then they're standing there alone on the fire escape. Sansa's arm still tingles from Jon's touch as they turn to face each other, the fire escape clanking beneath their feet. The air has the bite of a fire to it and the moon is golden tonight; _it is a witching night,_ she thinks. 

She is aware of his lean strength, of how the collar of his tee lays against his neck and how the fabric drapes against his abdomen, of how he smells like smoke and soap, of how she can tell his hair, too, is still damp from a shower. She realises now that she was beginning to grow accustomed to his effect on her, but after even a mere few hours apart, it is as sharp and tart as citrus all over again; it makes her mouth water and her vulnerabilities sting. And his coolness, his new distance, is not helping. He is not loving and sweet like he was on the creek bank today, when he pulled her close like he'd protect her and never let her go. It is like he is a different man—this is the man whose eyes turned black as he promised he'd fuck her for a week; this is the man who furiously swore he would hunt down Ramsay Bolton. 

( _One out of two promises upheld_ , her brain cannot help but note. Not that the first one was a _real_ promise, of course. _Gah._ Why is she thinking about this now? And which Jon does she want—passionate, gentle Jon who pulls her close and tucks her against his chest—or this other Jon, who doesn't yield to her, who openly reads her, who lets her make a fool of herself for him? Where is the seam between these two men and what does it say about her that she wants both?)

(She tries not to think about how she noted, last night, that that Jon could bring her to her knees with a single look, because that is really _so_ unhelpful right now.)

"I came to say thanks," she says, avoiding his eyes. "For everything."

"Really." He blows out a long line of smoke again. "You came all this way, in the middle of the night," he begins, eyes roving over her damp hair, "after showering and changing your clothes—" then his gaze traces her ill-fitting jumper, "—just to say thanks." 

He is definitely making fun of her right now. 

"Well, I was muddy and disgusting," Sansa fires back. "So of course I showered. I didn't—I didn't shower for _you_. And I had to come. You just—you just disappeared without saying anything at all this afternoon, so I felt like I had to—"

"—There it is again," he interrupts, shaking his head and letting out a disbelieving laugh. "You want me to communicate more, yet again. It's like you want me to say something specific." 

"And the way you keep saying that, it's like you have something specific in mind that you're expecting me to want, so what is it, Jon?" 

She doesn't feel cold anymore; she feels angry and embarrassed. When he doesn't say anything, just takes a long drag, she continues. "I thought—I just thought there was—" 

She doesn't know what she's even talking about anymore. She thought it was all settled, she thought it was all obvious, especially after he pulled her close like that; she didn't think she'd have to explain this. How much are they acknowledging this thing between them? Is it out in the open, or are they still pretending she doesn't want him? She cannot tell and it's killing her. If they're still pretending, she doesn't want to be the one to admit it—but if it is out in the open, why is he not returning her feelings? Is this a rejection? "How could you just leave without saying anything to me?" she finally wrenches out. "How could you just let me go like that?" 

"Sansa, I have your car and your clothes. You're not going anywhere unless I let you," Jon points out. He puts out his cigarette, to her surprise, in the ashtray balanced on the railing. Sansa stands there, confused but also sheepish. It is true that she would have to see him again no matter what, at least to get her car, and now the urgency she felt earlier seems silly, misplaced. She feels even more exposed. "And besides, didn't you want time with your sister? With your family?" 

"I—" She doesn't know what to say. She feels needy; she feels like a fool. Jon raises his brows at her as she falters. 

"Sansa, what do you want?" he asks plainly. 

"I want you to, for once, just say what you want!" she snaps, and then suddenly he's in her personal space, and she takes a step back. Her back hits the stone wall behind her, and the stone is jagged and harsh through the fabric of her coat and jumper. "Are you going to make me beg for at least a little communication?"

"I was considering it," he admits in a low voice, gaze flicking down to her mouth, her neck, lower, and then back up again, and she feels that little hitch, that clench, that precedes heat blooming between her legs. There's a rush of gooseflesh across her skin as she looks up at him, as she flattens her hands on the wall behind her, just for something solid to stop her from sliding downward. Is she reading into that, or...? "But I'm pretty sure I can't make you do anything," he adds, shaking his head, and his breath mists in the air as he lets out a sardonic laugh, but she doesn't find it funny. 

"When you held me, earlier, it just seemed—" She swallows. "It seemed like there was... a thing." 

"A _thing_?" 

Jon looks like he is trying very hard not to laugh now, but he also looks infuriated. "I barely stop myself from sleeping with you—have to put a physical barrier between us to stop myself from trying—then almost get myself killed for you, then dive into freezing water after you—ignoring the person I'm actually after, who has a gun and wants to kill us both—and you're asking if there's a 'thing' between us?" 

After such spotty communication, this feels a bit like being blasted by a furnace. Certainly she feels warm enough. She presses her palms to the wall to ground herself because his nearness, his sudden passion, and the scent of his skin are all dizzying. 

"Well, is there, or isn't there? What do you want?" 

(She is breathless and she knows she sounds like an idiot, but now she is just baiting him, because she wants to see what happens.) 

Jon rolls his eyes, then takes another step. 

"You want to know what I want?" he breathes, but before she can speak he's sliding his hands along her chin and jaw, into her damp hair, and he pulls her close even as he's pressing her against the wall. "This is what I want," he says roughly.

She instinctively closes her eyes as his thumb moves along the space behind her ear, making every sensitive place on her tingle with longing and anticipation, and their foreheads brush, then their eyelashes, and then he's pressing the softest kiss to her lips—a kiss that deepens, that makes his hands fist in her hair almost painfully, that makes her grab, helplessly, for the front of his shirt and fist her hands in it. 

This is the peculiar magic of autumn, that a midnight kiss can feel like a glimpse of a sideways world with witches and spells and towers and wishing wells. Or maybe it's just Jon, who smells like fire and who makes all the hairs on her skin stand to attention as though the very air is crackling with witchcraft. She is under his spell, she belongs to him.

So when he pulls on her hair to make her lift her chin upward, and his stubble scratches her skin as he murmurs her name against her neck, she obeys and tilts her head back. She twines her fingers in his hair and shifts her hips against his, and gasps when she can feel his desire. 

And then when he turns her to face the wall, presses her against it, and grazes his hands teasingly beneath her jumper, callouses rough against her breasts, and she gasps his name and he tells her to be quiet, she obeys and bites her lip against the urge to beg him for more, to whine his name as he teases her nipples, to cry out when he pinches them and bites the shell of her ear at the same time. 

And when he grips her hips and tells her to come home with him, she obeys. 

She holds onto Jon as they ride toward his house, arms wrapped around him possessively, because he belongs to her now, too. It is a delicate balance of control, of power, because when he leads her inside and sits on the edge of his bed, leaving her standing before him, she knows he is her captive even as he softly tells her to take off her clothes. 

"You told me I could look," he begins. His elbows are on his knees as he leans forward, watching her. "The other night, when you were drunk and taking off your top." 

She is pulling her jumper off and drops it on the uneven hardwood floor as he speaks. God but he told her she hadn't said anything bad; that seems pretty bad. 

"And did you?"

She shivers, standing there in just her jeans and her bra. Jon's gaze roves over her breasts, her shoulders, her hips. She feels self-conscious and silly, standing there alone, but something in the set of his shoulders tells her to wait, to only do as he tells her. Still, she can't help but cross her arms over her breasts. 

"No. Drop your arms," he says softly, and she does. He tells her to take off her jeans and she slides them down over her hips, and bends forward to step out of them. When she looks up, Jon is staring hungrily at her hips. "Take off your bra." 

She flushes and recoils. Maybe it would feel normal if she were lying beneath him, but she is standing, exposed, in a beam of moonlight. 

"No, it's too—"

"Sansa." 

It's the same tone of voice with which he told her to put on the helmet, to stick with Val, to get dressed—the same tone with which he told her he would fuck her all week, that she wouldn't need clothes at all. She returns his arch gaze. 

"I—I don't want to," she informs him, not nearly as commanding as she was aiming for. "I want you to take it off when we're on the bed." 

"But if I don't plan on fucking you on the bed, when am I supposed to get it off you?" he points out evenly, and heat blooms and pulses between her legs. God but she's pathetic. All he has to do is say the word 'fuck' and apparently she's ready to go, just like that. She has never had this problem before—it has always been a struggle to be ready for sex, to feel more than a low-level need for connection that she might as well sate with sex. Now she is resisting the urge to rub her thighs together, and only because she doesn't want to seem even more desperate than she already does. She has to have some pride left, after all. 

"Well, where were you planning on fucking me?" she counters, consciously not stumbling over the words, crossing her arms over her bra. Jon looks thoughtful and rubs his stubble. 

"Haven't decided yet," he says. 

"Where were you thinking of when you had to—what was it?—physically stop yourself?" she quotes, and a roguish gleam flashes in his eyes. 

"Against that door," he says immediately, nodding to the bedroom door behind her. "But that one can wait." And then his eyes harden and he drops the sly smile. "Take off the bra, Sansa."  
  
"No." 

She bites her lip as he gets to his feet, cocking his head to the side in a _really?_ sort of look. He walks behind her and every downy hair on the nape of her neck tingles with an awareness of him. She holds her breath, staring ahead, and then gasps when he closes his hand around her hair and pulls with a sharp tug. 

"Yes," he breathes in her ear. The peaks of her breasts are taut and everything in her is screaming to just do as he says, to turn around and pull him against her and make him take her, but for some reason—

"—What will you do if I don't?" she whispers. 

"Make you sleep alone." 

"You said you had to physically stop yourself before," she points out, mouth dry. "Isn't that punishment for you, too?" 

"I can wait. I waited before; I can wait again." He pulls on her hair again, tilting her head back, and she sways, knocking back against him. 

"No ,you can't," she says in a rush, and he's gripping her hips suddenly and burying his face in the crook of her neck. 

"You're right, I can't; take off the fucking bra, Sansa," he growls into her skin, and this time she obeys, reaching behind her to unhook it, and then he's pushing her down onto his bed, bending her over the edge and pulling her against him by her hipbone as his other hand reaches out beside hers to steady himself. She takes in the sight of his strong hand braced on the bed beside hers. His teeth graze her shoulder as she feels him pulling her underwear down, fingers slipping between her legs, and he gasps when he feels how much she wants him and curses. "You're mine," he tells her, and she gasps her assent. 

It's a blur, moving too fast yet also too slow: she buries her face in the sheets to muffle her gasping and pleading as he brings her to the edge, jeans rough and abrasive against her bare skin; then she's on her back and he's yanking his shirt over his head with rough, desperate movements; then he's pinning her wrists over her head as he pushes inside of her and they are gasping together, his forehead against hers and her name on his lips. 

They pull back and forth until dawn turns the room lavender: sometimes she is in control, laying dizzily on the edge of the bed as he kneels between her legs just like he did the night he undressed her; more often he is, and he makes her do the most wanton acts with nothing more than a look, a word, a touch. 

But when they fall asleep at last, he pulls her to his chest just like he did on the creek bank: like he loves her, like he needs her, like he'll do anything to keep her safe.

"Arya said you never let her talk about me," she says sleepily. 

"Don't want to hear about what I can't have," Jon replies, his voice rough with sleep, and she thinks of all of the years he slipped in and out of her awareness like smoke; she thinks of all the times that she looked at him and felt some sense of anticipation, like some part of her, some secret side of her, knew instinctively that he would be hers all along. "But you're mine now," he adds, and his fingers twine possessively in her hair. 

"I am," she whispers. 

There is no seam, there is no line to be drawn; there is no contradiction. There's just what she wants, and what she wants is Jon, both sides of him—just as he wants both sides of her. 


End file.
